Throughout history there have been numerous scientists who have made an enormous contribution to science that has caused a tremendous advance. This is the case of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. This physicist formulated the classical theory of electromagnetism by reducing the fact that light is made of electric and magnetic fields that propagate continuously through space. All these deductions were introduced in the Maxwell equations to reflect and demonstrate your theory. This theory led to the prediction of the existence of radio waves and radio waves.
In this article we are going to tell you all the biography, historical feats about Maxwell's equations.
Maxwell Biography
Keep in mind that all scientists start from work done by other past scientists. This saying is expressed by Newton in the phrase of "All scientists work on the shoulders of giants". This means that most of the feats are done thanks to the work that she had previously done other scientists. This fact is particularly true in the case of Maxwell since he was able to combine all the knowledge that already existed for 150 years on the subject of his work. In this way, you will be able to express the principles of electricity, magnetism, optics and their physical interrelation.
James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh in 1831. His family was middle class. This man always manifested a peculiar curiosity from his early childhood. At only 14 years old I had already written a paper. In this paper I described the first mechanical methods to be able to treat curves. He studied at the universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge where he astonished students and teachers given his ability to solve numerical problems. All the problems appeared in the mathematics and physics subjects that were difficult for the rest of the students.
At the age of 23 he graduated in mathematics from Trinity College and two years later he was able to obtain a position as Professor of Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen. He stayed on this site for 4 years and was forging multiple knowledge. In such a way that in 1860 he was able to obtain a similar position but at the prestigious King's College, London. It is around this time that the most fruitful time of his entire career began. In this place there was a much better economy that allowed him to conduct experiments and test his theories.
Maxwell equations
Maxwell's equations are perhaps the best legacy that this scientist has left. Since his level and his contributions to science were increasing, He was able to join the Royal Society in 1861. This was where the public or the electromagnetic theory of light returned with his family to his parents' home in Scotland. He was appointed director of the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge in 1871. He finally died of abdominal cancer at the age of 48 in 1879.
It is the publication of the article entitled "A dynamic theory of the electromagnetic field" where Maxwell's equations appeared for the first time. These equations are those that serve to express in a clear and concise way all the phenomenological laws about electricity and magnetism. It must be borne in mind that they had been formulated since the XNUMXth century and had relied on the laws of Ampère, Faraday and Lenz. At present, the vector annotation used was introduced years later by Heaviside and Gibbs.
Importance of Maxwell's equations
The value of these equations and not only reside in the synthesis of all the ideas of all the scientists who were providing information on electricity and magnetism. And is that Maxwell's equations revealed the intimate interplay between electricity and magnetism. From their equations, other equations could be deduced, such as the wave equation that served to predict the existence of waves of an electromagnetic nature that are capable of propagating at the speed of light.
From this it could be concluded that light and magnetism are aspects of the same substance and that light is an electromagnetic disturbance. Thanks to this, Maxwell's work served to synthesize and unify optics to electromagnetism and revealed the electromagnetic essence that light has. The electromagnetic essence of light was due to experiment in a laboratory and was carried out by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz in the year 1887, years after the death of Maxwell.
This could be done by building an oscillator that served as an emitter and a resonator that acted as a receiver. Thanks to these devices it was possible to create waves and receive them in a distant place and this caused an Italian engineer named Guillermo Marconi could perfect the technique to generate a technological revolution. This technological revolution is radio communications. Some of the everyday elements that we have today, such as mobile phones, are based on this technology discovered by Guillermo Marconi.
All these reasons are enough to believe that Maxwell's equations, which may at first seem somewhat more theoretical than basic science, have ended up having great applications in today's technology. The application of Maxwell's equations has come to transform the world in such a way that we can communicate remotely through the use of telecommunications.
The legacy
All these contributions are not restricted only to the theory of electromagnetism and light. Keep in mind that Maxwell was a rather curious physicist who also studied the kinetics of gases and thermodynamics. These aspects were applied in various statistical analysis methods in order to determine the probability that a particle in a dilute gas has of having a given velocity. This discovery was Today he calls it the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about Maxwell's equations and their importance.