The Legacy of James Clerk Maxwell

Have you ever wondered why the sky is blue? Or if the color I call blue is the same color you call blue? Have you ever tried to simplify and summarize many different ideas into one concept to help yourself understand it better? The scientist James Clerk Maxwell spent 48 years of life trying to answer questions like these. Born on June 13, 1831 to a country family of the gentry of Scotland, Maxwell grew up with a solid educational foundation from Edinburgh Academy and Cambridge University. He worked as a professor of natural philosophy at several universities in England and Scotland, such as Marischal College, King's College, and Cambridge University. Maxwell was loved by his students for his willingness to help and his teaching methodology. Maxwell often used demonstrations in the classroom, which was not the norm, and encouraged students to do their own exploration as he had done. Maxwell began his own exploration of scientific topics when he was very young. His parents were acutely aware of his intelligence due to his inquisitive nature. At the young age of 14, after tinkering with pencils and strings, he constructed a simplified formula for finding the focal points of two ellipses. This led to his first published paper, which was presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He continued to tinker with other topics in physics, such as light and color. Using color filters, he was able to develop what is known as the color triangle, a diagram indicating the ratio of each primary color required to make all other colors seen in nature. Maxwell also performed research on how people see color using one of the first ophthalmoscopes to study the eyes of neighborhood dogs and friends. Eventually, his work with color led him to produce the first color photograph, and gave doctors a deeper understanding of how the eye functions. These projects were put on hold for a time, however, when he learned about the work of Michael Faraday. Faraday had very little support from the scientific community for his theories on electricity and magnetism, and Maxwell believed that mathematical support was the missing link. So Maxwell worked on finding equations and mathematical data to support Faraday's research. The various pieces of electromagnetic systems needed to be represented in simple forms, which demonstrated their connections. To that end, Maxwell developed what he was most famous for, the Maxwell equations. These equations are still used today by every physicist and electrical engineer. They led to the acceptance of Faraday's ideas in the scientific community and electricity to what it is today. Maxwell also performed a great deal of research on the ideal gas law and its applications at high or low temperatures. Maxwell and his wife Catherine worked together in their makeshift laboratory in their attic at Glenlarff, their estate in southwest Scotland. Catherine often made a strong fire or carried large quantities of ice to the attic to vary the temperature for their experiments. His findings eventually led to the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, which has contributed heavily to theories made in the field of quantum mechanics. Maxwell spent his last five years establishing Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, mentoring students, assisting other scientists in their own scientific publications, and exploring his own interest in the connections between electricity, magnetism, and light. He was the first to discover the magnetic properties that light contained. This discovery and discussions that arose out of it inspired Albert Einstein to develop his theory of special relativity several decades later. In 1877, Maxwell's health began to decline. After a few years, he received an official diagnosis of abdominal cancer, the same disease that had taken his mother's life when he was young. On November 5, 1879, he passed away with his wife by his side. Maxwell's legacy did not end with his death, however. Most of his discoveries were not fully appreciated until 20 to 50 years after being published. As a result, Maxwell was sometimes left without work or financial backing. Many people today still do not realize the number of contributions that James Clerk Maxwell made to science and everyday life. He published five books and 100 papers on these and many other topics during his lifetime. His continuous questioning and gift of finding simplifying and unifying theories have left science completely changed and dramatically improved.