James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell , 1831-79, great Scottish physicist. After a brilliant career at Edinburgh and Cambridge, where he won early recognition with mathematical papers, he was professor at Marischal College, Aberdeen (1856-60), and at King's College, London (1860-65). In 1871 he was appointed first professor of experimental physics at Cambridge, where he directed the organization of the Cavendish Laboratory. He is known especially for his work in electricity and magnetism, summarized in A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873). Basing his own study and research on that of Faraday, he developed the theory of the electromagnetic field on a mathematical basis and made possible a much greater understanding of the phenomena in this field. He was led to the conclusion that electric and magnetic energy travel in transverse waves that propagate at a speed equal to that of light; light is thus only one type of electromagnetic radiation . Maxwell's electromagnetic theory occupies a position in classical physics comparable to Newton's work on mechanics. One of his early papers, "On the Stability of Motion of Saturn's Rings" (1859), was especially important and foreshadowed his later investigations of heat and the kinetic theory of gases. He is also known for his studies of color (which led to his invention of the color disk named for him), and color blindness. In addition to his papers in these fields, he wrote a classic elementary text in dynamics, Matter and Motion (1876).

Maxwell, James Clerk (1831–79). Maxwell was a mathematical physicist particularly eminent for his work on electromagnetism, and on the theory of gases. Educated in Edinburgh and Cambridge, his earliest work was on the stability of Saturn's rings. After holding chairs in Aberdeen and in London, and managing the family estates in Scotland, he was in 1871 appointed to the professorship at Cambridge founded in memory of Henry Cavendish. He oversaw the building of the Cavendish Laboratory, where J. J. Thomson and Lord Rutherford were to work. He gave mathematical form to Michael Faraday's discoveries, leading to a new understanding of light and to the discovery of radio, and introduced statistical explanation into physics with his work on gases. He was an intellectual giant, who also wrote playful verse, and his early death was a great loss.

David Knight

Maxwell, James Clerk (1831–79) Scottish mathematician and physicist who did outstanding theoretical work in electromagnetic radiation. He used the theory of the electromagnetic field for Maxwell's equations, which linked light with electromagnetic waves, established the nature of Saturn's rings, and did further work in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The former unit of magnetic flux, the maxwell (symbol Mx), was named after him (but has since been replaced by the SI unit, the weber).