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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.
In summary, Maxwell's equations successfully unified theories of light and electromagnetism, which is one of the great unifications in physics. [9] Maxwell built a simple flywheel model of electromagnetism, and Boltzmann built an elaborate mechanical model ("Bicykel") based on Maxwell's flywheel model, which he used for lecture demonstrations. [10]
L. Pearce Williams (1991): "In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell published a rambling and difficult two-volume Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism that was destined to change the orthodox picture of physical reality. This treatise did for electromagnetism what Newton's Principia had done for classical mechanics. It not only provided the mathematical ...
In 1864 James Clerk Maxwell of Edinburgh announced his electromagnetic theory of light, which was perhaps the greatest single step in the world's knowledge of electricity. [123] Maxwell had studied and commented on the field of electricity and magnetism as early as 1855/6 when On Faraday's lines of force [124] was read to the Cambridge ...
James Clerk Maxwell used Faraday's conceptualisation to help formulate his unification of electricity and magnetism in his field theory of electromagnetism. With Albert Einstein 's special relativity and the Michelson–Morley experiment , it became clear that electromagnetic waves could travel in a vacuum without the need of a medium or ...
The "Maxwell–Hertz" or "Heaviside–Hertz" equations subsequently formed an important basis for the further development of electrodynamics, and Heaviside's notation is still used today. Other important contributions to Maxwell's theory were made by George FitzGerald, Joseph John Thomson, John Henry Poynting, Hendrik Lorentz, and Joseph Larmor.
The atomic theory of matter had been proposed again in the early 19th century by the chemist John Dalton and became one of the hypotheses of the kinetic-molecular theory of gases developed by Clausius and James Clerk Maxwell to explain the laws of thermodynamics. Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906)
James Clerk Maxwell developed a model to explain electric and magnetic phenomena using the aether, a model that led to what are now called Maxwell's equations and the understanding that light is an electromagnetic wave. [2]