James Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879

Born Edinburgh, Scotland Educated at University of Edinburgh and later at Cambridge University Second Wrangler (honors man math tripos)) 1854 Cambridge University Fellow of Trinity College 1855 Aberdeen University Professor 1856-1860 Adams Prize - motion of Saturn's rings 1857 Kings College Univ. or London - chaired Professor Astronomy 1860-1865 University of Cambridge - first professor experimental physics 1871 Established and equipped the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge College

Maxwell enjoyed the pleasures of a Scottish country gentleman in the management of his family estate at Glenlair near Edinburgh.  Died at 48 in Cambridge after a painful illness.

Maxwell is universally accepted as the greatest physicist of the 19th century.  Maxwell was a great observer, experimenter and mathematician.  His views were not accepted by many but were appreciated by Heaveside, and Poynting.  His theories became accepted after proof of electromagnetic waves by Hertz in 1888.

Maxwell first expressed his equations in terms of potentials with Cartesian coordinates but others only could understand the concept when Heaviside and Hertz re wrote his equations in terms of field quantities and later when Lorentz further simplified the concepts by adding vector notation.

Hertz did his great work on radio waves at the University of Karlsruhe right near where Schroff is today and in the same general Swabian region where ERNI Components is located and which is also the home of Robert Bosch and Gottlieb Daimler and many other industrialists.

Areas of Maxwell's Studies:

Saturn's Rings
Color Perception
Kenetic Theory of Gases
Electricity and Magnetism - Maxwell's Laws relate to Faraday's Law (just substitute magnetic for electric in Faraday's law and we get Maxwell's laws.
Electromagnetic Theory of Light (wave motion with speed determined by propagation of electromagnetic fields)
Theorized that there were other forms of Electromagnetic Energy like heat and light but which could not be seen.

Material from:
Colliers Encyclopedia
Proceedings of the IEEE July 1998