Father of Modern Physics: James Clerk Maxwell

I'm very excited to tell you that this video is a collaboration with the excellent YouTube channel Arvin Ash Complex Things Explained Simply. So while we're going to go into depth on the interesting history and the life of the scientist James Clerk Maxwell over at Arvin Ash, they're going to dig much more into the details of Maxwell's equations. So be sure to check out their video at the link in the description, and while you're there, subscribe to their channel. For most, a career in science is not a path to fame and notoriety. Certainly there are some scientists whose names are household names associated with certain periods in history, people like Copernicus or Newton or Einstein. But for every scientist whose name you recognize, there are hundreds more who've contributed to the sum of human knowledge and whose names are relatively unknown. Among those, the man that Einstein described as the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton. He's been called the father of modern physics, the founder of the field of electrical engineering. A 1999 survey of physicists declared him to be the third most important physicist of all time, voted only behind Newton and Einstein. You might never have heard his name before, but the life of James Clerk Maxwell deserves to be remembered. Maxwell was born June 13, 1831 to a family of comfortable means. His father, John Clerk, was a member of the minor nobility. His family recognized from a young age that he had an insatiable inquisitiveness and a naturally gifted mind. By the age of eight, he was quoting Milton and large chunks of the book of Psalms. His mother died of abdominal cancer after an unsuccessful operation that same year. After the death of his mother, his early schooling passed to his father and Jane Kay, his aunt, who said of his education that it was humiliating to be asked so many questions, wouldn't couldn't answer by a child. He was briefly and disastrously tutored by a 16 year old who was said to be cruel to him. On February 12, 1842, James's father took him to see an interesting show, a demonstration of electric propulsion and magnetic force by Scottish inventor Robert Davidson. Davidson's electrically powered machines, such as a printing press, a lathe and a small powered carriage, were on display and may have served as a significant inspiration to the 10 year old. Maxwell was sent to school at the Edinburgh Academy, but struggled socially. The first year classes have been full, so he joined the second year with boys older than him. When he first arrived, he was given the cruel nickname Dafty, apparently because he arrived wearing homemade shoes and a tunic. He made a few friends, such as future scholars Lewis Campbell and Peter Guthrie Tate. At 13, he won the school's mathematics medal and first prize in both English and poetry. In 1845, he wrote his first scientific paper, describing mechanical means of drawing mathematical curves using a piece of twine, as well as properties of ellipses and Cartesian ovals. The paper was presented by a professor from the University of Edinburgh, as they thought him too young to present himself. While not entirely original, the work did simplify the construction of multifocal ellipses. He joined the University of Edinburgh two years later at 16. While he had a number of well-regarded teachers, he didn't find the work demanding, and spent a considerable amount of time on his own projects. He did his own experiments on polarized light with improvised equipment. Using gelatine and a pair of polarizing prisms, he discovered photoelasticity, a means of measuring stress distribution in a physical structure. At 18, he contributed two papers for the Royal Society in Edinburgh, and again was considered too young to present. His tutor presented instead. In October of 1850, he began attending the University of Cambridge, eventually settling in Trinity College. There he joined with the elite secret society of intellectuals called the Cambridge Apostles. He graduated in 1854 with a degree in mathematics, second in his class, and was declared equal with the first, after examination that won him the Smith's Prize, which was given annually to two mathematics or physics students. He applied for a fellowship at Trinity, and in 1855 finally presented his own paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the paper focused on color and colorblindness. In 1856, he won the Strachan Gold Medal, Edinburgh's highest mathematics prize. He became a fellow at Cambridge in 1855, but shortly accepted a position as the chair of natural philosophy at Mariscald College in Aberdeen. When he got the job, he was just 25 years old, a decade or more younger than most of the professors. Here he decided to focus on a new problem, Saturn's rings. Galileo had first seen the rings in 1610, and in 1655 Christian Huygens recognized them as rings, but the nature of the ring still wasn't understood. Scientists weren't sure how they could be solid without breaking up, drifting away, or crashing into the planet. The topic had also been chosen for the 1857 Adams Prize, a prestigious scientific award given out by Cambridge. Maxwell proved that a solid ring wouldn't be stable, and that a liquid ring would break into blobs because of wave action. He concluded that it must be made up of what he called brick bats, numerous small particles all orbiting Saturn. He was the only researcher who had accomplished enough to submit an entry, so he won the 130 pound Adams Prize. One astronomer said the work was, one of the most remarkable applications of mathematics to physics that I have ever seen. While at the college, he became friends with the school's president, Reverend Daniel Duar, and fell in love with his daughter Catherine. They married in 1858. Fairly little is known about Catherine, although she did work on experiments regarding viscosity. Myerscough College emerged with another to become the University of Aberdeen, so he ended up in the Chair of Natural Philosophy at King's College in London. Among his many interests was one that also captivated Newton, color vision. He wrote papers concerning human perception of color, color blindness, and color theory. His paper on the theory of color vision presented to the Royal Society in 1860, won him the Rumford Medal, given for an outstandingly important recent discovery in the field of thermal or optical properties. He used linear algebra to prove Thomas Young's trichromatic color theory, that the human eye had three different kinds of photoreceptors that were sensitive to different wavelengths. In his paper, and later in practice, he described how taking three black and white photos with red, green, and blue filters, and then superimposing them with a projection to produce the first durable color photograph. This paper also theorized that color blindness was brought on by the absence of one of the three kinds of photoreceptors. He also did significant work regarding the kinetic theory of gases, establishing that temperature of a gas is entirely a product of the speed of the individual molecules. Importantly, he also realized that temperature is a product of the average speed of the gases, because some of the molecules would speed up or slow down through collisions. He produced what is now called the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, which was the first statistical law of physics, and showed that the particles within a gas would have a distribution of speeds. He predicted what that distribution would be. It showed that the second law of thermodynamics, that heat flows from higher temperature objects to lower ones, is a statistical law, although some individual particles may disobey the law, while the majority followed it. His time at King's College also brought him into regular contact with Michael Faraday. While Faraday was 40 years Maxwell senior and showing signs of dementia, still the pair respected each other's work. Faraday had done pioneering work in electromagnetism, another field that Maxwell would make breakthroughs in. As early as 1855, he'd written a paper on Faraday's lines of force, simplifying Faraday's work into the relationship between magnetism and electricity. He synthesized this understanding into a set of 20 equations, later simplified into four partial differential equations known as Maxwell's equations. These equations form a major part of the foundation of classical electromagnetism, optics, and electrical circuits. His work on electromagnetism would have profound implications. In 1862 he calculated that the speed of the propagation of an electromagnetic field was approximately the speed of light. He explained that he could scarcely avoid the conclusion that light and magnetism were products of the same phenomenon, thus unifying some of nature's fundamental forces. His paper, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, showed that light and magnetism are affectations of the same substance, effectively turning electricity and magnetism into a single system, electromagnetism. He turned Faraday's lines of force into an electromagnetic field, understanding that light behaved as a wave through space. Einstein would later say that the special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell's equations. Heinrich Hertz later experimentally demonstrated the existence of Maxwell's theorized magnetic field. Maxwell theorized that these electromagnetic waves should be able to be reflected and refracted the same way as light. This was an important precursor to understanding radio waves, and therefore radio communication. His theory is basis of our understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum today, but it is a large spectrum of which visual light is only a small part. Even more impressive, he did this theoretically and mathematically without the experimental evidence. One author characterized this discovery as one of the greatest achievements of 19th century physics. He resigned his chair of King's College in 1865 and returned to his home at his estate, Glenlair, with Catherine. He offered contributions to other discussing the rigidity of various forms of lattice, the textbook The Theory of Heat, and a paper setting forth the theoretical basis for control engineering. He returned to Cambridge in 1871 to become the first Cavendish professor of physics, and was put in charge of putting together the Cavendish Laboratory, which opened in 1874. Maxwell edited and published a collection and notes on Cavendish's work, which brought to light a considerable amount of research Cavendish had done that was previously unknown. In April of 1879, he began having trouble swallowing, which was the first sign of a much greater illness. He died in Cambridge of abdominal cancer at the age of 48, the same cancer that had claimed his mother. Numerous plaques mark his equations and life, and the home where he was born in Edinburgh now houses a foundation bearing his name. A statue was unveiled in 2008, commissioned by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. While he might not be as famous as other scientists, his work was truly transformative, although theoretical and mathematical. Physicist and Cambridge professor Malcolm Longair explained Maxwell's relative obscurity was because his contributions are not easily understood by the layperson. His work is mostly relegated to textbooks, his praise mostly comes from other physicists, but his contributions and their importance is difficult to overstate. Carl Sagan said that though Maxwell is entirely unknown except to a few other academic scientists, he has done more to shape our civilization than any 10 recent presidents and prime ministers. Einstein kept three portraits in his Princeton study of Newton, Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. Einstein famously corrected a man who said that Einstein had accomplished great things by standing on Newton's shoulders by saying, no I don't, I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell. Stephen Hawking called him the physicist physicist and Max Planck said he achieved greatness unequaled. In his life Maxwell was described as wry, kind and hard-working. He never seemed to seek fame, the pursuit of knowledge seemed to be enough for him. Shortly before his death he told a colleague, I have been thinking how very gently I've been dealt with. I have never received a violent shove in all my life. My only desire that I can have is to, like David, serve my own generation by the will of God, and then to fall asleep.