Many scientists work on theoretical concepts.
But James Clerk Maxwell’s work was unique because it led to the development of practical
inventions like the TV.
He changed the world forever.
Those aren’t my words, but the words of Albert Einstein.
Einstein was referring to Maxwell’s most famous discovery: that magnetism and electricity
were linked.
Without this understanding, many of the technologies we rely on would not exist.
Before we delve into his groundbreaking discovery, Maxwell's scientific career had begun long
before at the age of 14 when he published his first academic paper.
It described an unusual way of drawing geometric curves using twine.
A prominent professor at Edinburgh University described it as “ingenious”.
The paper was important not for its content, but for the effect it had on Maxwell.
It put him on a path to a career in mathematics.
Maxwell was born in Edinburgh on June 13, 1831, and grew up in the country, on a big
estate his parents built in southwest Scotland.
He had an older sister who died in infancy.
His mother was nearly 40 when he was born.
As a little boy, he was fascinated by how things worked.
When he was two, he pulled a rope in one room and was amazed that a bell rang in another.
Like magic.
Or, rather, like science.
Then he discovered the wires hidden in the walls.
His mum described him as inquisitive; writing, “show me how it dooes” is never out of
his mouth”.
As a boy, he could recite long passages of John Milton’s poems.
He loved poetry and wrote his own later his life.
His memory was so good that he could recite all 176 verses of Psalm 119.
He was a devout Christian - a man of God and also a man of science.
He wrote, "Science is but an image of the truth, and should speak only so far as it
is spoken to."
In other words, it cannot provide all pieces of the puzzle.
His mother was responsible for his early education, but when he was eight she died of abdominal
cancer, the same disease that would take his own life.
A private tutor didn’t work out either; he reportedly beat Maxwell and chided him
for being slow.
Then, when Maxwell was 10, he was sent to the prestigious Edinburgh Academy.
But he had a hard time fitting in; he was teased for his homemade shoes, strange country
dress, and his strong Galloway accent.
His peers called him “Daftie” which is Scottish slang for “silly” or “foolish”.
He was anything but.
However, his peers couldn’t understand his brilliance; Maxwell would draw diagrams they
didn’t understand, and make mechanical models that didn’t make sense to them.
Later, at the University of Edinburgh, he still struggled to fit in.
It wasn’t until he arrived at the University of Cambridge that his talents began to be
recognized.
His math tutor at Cambridge, William Hopkins, is reported to have said that Maxwell was
the most extraordinary man he had ever met.
“...he is unquestionably the most extraordinary man I have met with, in the whole range of
my experience…”
When Maxwell later applied for a teaching position at Marischal College in Aberdeen,
Scotland, to be closer to his father whose health was deteriorating, Hopkins wrote this
glowing reference letter:
“His mind is devoted to the prosecution of scientific studies, and it is impossible
that he should not become (if his life is spared) one of the most distinguished men
of science in this or any other country.”
Maxwell became the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marsichal College - what they used to call
physics.
He headed the entire department at the age of 25.
But his dad would never see him in this role; he passed away before he took up the position,
which was a terrible loss as they were very close.
Maxwell married the daughter of the head of Marsichal College who was seven years his
senior.
Their marriage was childless but very fruitful.
Katherine helped him with experiments, including his famous ones on color.
He realized that the human eye can only see red, blue, and green light.
Any other colors we see are a mixture of these.
Maxwell was the first to show that any color can be produced by combining three primary
colors in appropriate proportions.
He calculated the exact amount of red, blue, and green needed to make any other color.
And displayed it on a color triangle.
This led to a method for creating color photographs.
He proposed that a color image could be created by taking three separate photographs each
with a different color filter: red, green, and blue.
By superimposing the images together, the full-color image could be reconstructed.
His colleague, Thomas Suton, applied this method to create the world’s first color
photograph of a tartan ribbon in 1861.
While at Marischal College, he also spent two years solving a problem that had stumped
scientists for 200 years, ever since Galileo first observed Saturn’s rings.
What were Saturn’s rings made of?
Nobody had any idea.
Scientists thought they might have been solid, but if they were, the rings should have been
breaking up or crashing into the planet.
Maxwell used math to show that the only way the rings could remain relatively stable is
if they consisted of many small particles each independently orbiting Saturn.
When the Voyager probes flew by Saturn more than 100 years later, in the 1980s, and sent
back images, they proved he was right.
Despite Maxwell’s stellar scientific reputation, he lost his job when Marsichal College merged
with the neighboring King’s College to form the University of Aberdeen, and his position
became redundant.
He applied for a Chair at the University of Edinburgh but lost out to his childhood friend,
physicist Peter Tait.
Fortunately, his resumé impressed King’s College London which appointed him Chair of
Natural Philosophy in 1860.
Before taking up his new position, he suffered from an attack of smallpox which nearly killed
him.
He credited his wife with saving his life.
A few years later, it would be Maxwell who nursed his wife back to health when she fell
very ill.
Maxwell’s biographer and friend described their marriage as one “...of unexampled
devotion.”
His years in London were his most productive.
In fact, that is an understatement.
Einstein, Richard Feynman, and many other scientists consider Maxwell’s work during
this period the greatest discovery of the 20th century.
Maxwell discovered that magnets attracting or repelling each other, or electricity making
a lightbulb turn on, are connected.
He built on the work of self-educated physicist Michael Faraday who had shown that a moving
magnet could make electricity flow through a coil of wire.
This mysterious interaction between magnetism and electricity was called “electromagnetism”.
Maxwell worked out that varying electric and magnetic forces could create waves of energy
that travel through space without any wires.
Like ripples across the surface of the water.
He discovered that electromagnetic waves traveled at the speed of light.
Just as there’s a range of different colors of light, he theorized that light was just
one type of a whole range of electromagnetic waves.
And that there are other types that the human eye can’t see: radio waves, microwaves,
x-rays.
This paved the way for the radio, microwaves to heat food, and x-ray machines - pretty
much any modern electrical or electronic technology which relies on the transmission of electromagnetic
waves through the air to send and receive signals.
In 1865, Maxwell described all that was known about the relationship between electricity
and magnetism in a set of equations that now bear his name.
Maxwell’s equations also gave Einstein the tools to develop his most famous theory.
Einstein showed that the speed of light never changes no matter the reference frame, which
Maxwell's equations helped establish.
For example, if I were to take this ball and throw it toward you at 20 miles an hour, if
you were running toward me, the ball would appear to approach you more quickly, and if
you were to run away from me, then the ball would appear to approach you less quickly.
But that’s not the case with light.
If I fire a laser beam at you, regardless of whether you’re running toward me, away
from me, or if you're standing still, it’ll appear to approach you at the same speed.
This revolutionized our understanding of the universe.
It’s no wonder when someone pointed out Einstein stood on the shoulders of the work
of Newton, he reportedly corrected them by saying, “No, I don’t.
I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell.”
He even had a portrait of Maxwell hanging in his office.
In 1871, Maxwell became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics, one of the most senior
faculty positions in physics at Cambridge University.
He was in charge of developing the Cavendish Laboratory, which has since produced more
than 30 Nobel laureates.
Despite his many scientific contributions, Maxwell was relatively unknown outside of
academia.
His work was largely foundational; he helped plant the seed for future discoveries.
He also died when he was relatively young.
In April 1879, he began having difficulty swallowing, a symptom of abdominal cancer
which took his mother’s life and would take his at the same age.
Toward the end of his life, Maxwell told a Cambridge colleague:
“I have been thinking how very gently I have always been dealt with.
I have never had a violent shove all my life.
The only desire which I can have is like David (in reference to King David from the Bible)
to serve my own generation by the will of God, and then fall asleep.”
Maxwell died on November 5, 1879, at the age of 48.
He was buried in a churchyard not far from where he grew up, alongside his wife and parents.
His headstone is a simple one, not what you might expect for a man of his stature.
Despite his immense contributions to science, he received few public honors during his lifetime.
But over time, he has been increasingly recognized and celebrated.
There’s a popular saying that references his brilliance.
“And God said…Maxwell’s equations…and there was light.”
Maxwell used math to explain the fundamental principles of electricity and magnetism that
paved the way for countless innovations.
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