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This theory came to dominate the conceptions of light in the eighteenth century, displacing the previously prominent vibration theories, where light was viewed as "pressure" of the medium between the source and the receiver, first championed by René Descartes, and later in a more refined form by Christiaan Huygens. [1]
The publication of the equations marked the unification of a theory for previously separately described phenomena: magnetism, electricity, light, and associated radiation. Since the mid-20th century, it has been understood that Maxwell's equations do not give an exact description of electromagnetic phenomena, but are instead a classical limit ...
Faraday proposed in 1847 that light was a high-frequency electromagnetic vibration, which could propagate even in the absence of a medium such as the ether. [42] Faraday's work inspired James Clerk Maxwell to study electromagnetic radiation and light. Maxwell discovered that self-propagating electromagnetic waves would travel through space at a ...
A theory of electromagnetism, known as classical electromagnetism, was developed by several physicists during the period between 1820 and 1873, when James Clerk Maxwell's treatise was published, which unified previous developments into a single theory, proposing that light was an electromagnetic wave propagating in the luminiferous ether. [26]
The electromagnetic theory of light adds to the old undulatory theory an enormous province of transcendent interest and importance; it demands of us not merely an explanation of all the phenomena of light and radiant heat by transverse vibrations of an elastic solid called ether, but also the inclusion of electric currents, of the permanent ...
James Clerk Maxwell FRS FRSE (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish physicist and mathematician [1] who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon.
Heaviside O, Electromagnetic Theory, 3rd ed, 3 vols, The Electrician, 1893, 1899, 1912. Hertz H, Electric Waves: Being Researches on the Propagation of Electric Action with Finite Velocity through Space, Macmillan, 1893. Jeans JH, The Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism, 5th ed, Cambridge University, 1927.
The electromagnetic spectrum. Together, Maxwell's equations provide a single uniform theory of the electric and magnetic fields and Maxwell's work in creating this theory has been called "the second great unification in physics" after the first great unification of Newton's law of universal gravitation. [17]