Discovering Electromagnetic Force
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), the Trinity College Cambridge Senior Wrangler, gave the equations below and thus simultaneously combined two of the forces of Physics, becoming the electromagnetic force (the other forces being the strong force, the weak force, and the gravitational force). In fact, Maxwell derived 20 equations in his original treatise, but it was Heaviside (1850-1925) who reduced them to the four which he studied as a UG physics student. James, using his equations, calculated that the speed of an electromagnetic field was almost that of the speed of light; realising the connection, he went on to show that one can arrive at the wave equation when one manipulates his equations.
Maxwell equations Electrodynamics;
∇.D = ρ
∇.B = 0
∇xE = -∂B/∂t
∇xH = J +∂D/∂t
Teaching Social Scientists
I recall that before embarking on a teaching trajectory where I predominantly taught Mathematics and Statistics to Social Scientists, I was asked in an interview to discuss statistics with the chair of the panel, well my training is in Mathematics and Physics so I was only aware of the Maxwell-Boltzmann, Fermi–Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics (at the time of course) so when I was asked about the chi-squared distribution and the F distribution etc I sadly lost my way (things are different now) but fortunately I was still given the post and I was gently asked to brush up on my statistics at the end of the meeting.
Returning to James, he like I.Newton (1643-1727), was one of two of Einstein’s friends and one can no doubt recall that Newton too had friends from the past with:
“Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.” I.Newton.
But this is not my favourite Newton quote: that prize goes to
“Hypotheses non fingo (“I frame no hypotheses”), which can be found in the Principia in which Newton pre-empts the question, “what causes the gravitational force at a distance?” by saying the above, he implied that we know how to calculate this force, but we don’t know what causes it. We had to wait for Einstein to give us this understanding with his bending of space-time, but that is for another day.
Revolutionizing Thermodynamics
Regrettably, James, like his mother, died of stomach cancer far too early; however, Maxwell did groundbreaking work in thermodynamics, which led to what we call the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, and here I have to pause and mention the tortured soul L. Boltzmann (1844-1906) who took his life (by hanging) when his work was ridiculed and only a week later his work was verified. Such events are not uncommon in Science and Mathematics; the great set theorist G. Cantor (1845-1918), for example, was similarly persecuted for his visionary and revolutionary work, suffering bouts of depression and E.Galois (1811-1832) who went to his own death (as a dual) after failing his second entrance exam at the L’Ecole Polytechnique because his examiners could not comprehend his amazing ideas.
Alas, my meandering discussion means, once again, I have to stop abruptly.
