Life
James Clerk Maxwell was born on 13 June 1831 at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, to John Clerk Maxwell of Middlebie, an advocate, and Frances Cay daughter of Robert Hodshon Cay and sister of John Cay. His birthplace now houses a museum operated by the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation. His father was a man of comfortable means of the Clerk species of Penicuik, holders of the baronetcy of Clerk of Penicuik. His father's brother was the 6th baronet. He had been born "John Clerk", adding Maxwell to his own after he inherited as an infant in 1793 the Middlebie estate, a Maxwell property in Dumfriesshire. James was a first cousin of both the artist Jemima Blackburn the daughter of his father's sister and the civil engineer William Dyce Cay the son of his mother's brother. Cay and Maxwell werefriends and Cay acted as his best man when Maxwell married.
Maxwell's parents met and married when they were living into their thirties; his mother was nearly 40 when he was born. They had had one earlier child, a daughter named Elizabeth, who died in infancy.
When Maxwell was young his brand moved to Glenlair, in Kirkcudbrightshire which his parents had built on the estate which comprised 1,500 acres 610 ha. All standards suggest that Maxwell had keeps an unquenchable curiosity from an early age. By the age of three, everything that moved, shone, or delivered a noise drew the question: "what's the go o' that?" In a passage added to a letter from his father to his sister-in-law Jane Cay in 1834, his mother subjected this innate sense of inquisitiveness:
He is a very happy man, and has renovation much since the weather got moderate; he has great work with doors, locks, keys, etc., and "show me how it doos" is never out of his mouth. He also investigates the hidden course of streams and bell-wires, the way the water gets from the pond through the wall....
Recognising the boy's potential, Maxwell's mother Frances took responsibility for his early education, which in the Victorian era was largely the job of the woman of the house. At eight he could recite long passages of Milton and the whole of the 119th psalm 176 verses. Indeed, his cognition of scripture was already detailed; he could render chapter and verse for almost any acknowledgment from the psalms. His mother was taken ill with abdominal cancer and, after an unsuccessful operation, died in December 1839 when he was eight years old. His education was then overseen by his father and his father's sister-in-law Jane, both of whom played pivotal roles in his life. His formal schooling began unsuccessfully under the control of a 16-year-old hired tutor. Little is invited about the young man hired to instruct Maxwell, apart from that he treated the younger boy harshly, chiding him for being behind and wayward. The tutor was dismissed in November 1841. James' father took him to Robert Davidson's demonstration of electric propulsion and magnetic force on February 12, 1842, an experience with profound implications for the boy.
Maxwell was sent to the prestigious Daftie". He never seemed to resent the epithet, bearing it without complaint for many years. Social isolation at the Academy ended when he met Lewis Campbell and Peter Guthrie Tait, two boys of a similar age who were to become notable scholars later in life. They remained lifelong friends.
Maxwell was fascinated by geometry at an early age, rediscovering the regular polyhedra ago he received all formal instruction. Despite his winning the school's scripture biography prize in hisyear, his academic work remained unnoticed until, at the age of 13, he won the school's mathematical medal and first prize for both English and poetry.
Maxwell's interests ranged far beyond the school syllabus and he did non pay particular attention to examination performance. He wrote his first scientific paper at the age of 14. In it he described a mechanical means of drawing mathematical curves with a portion of twine, and the properties of ellipses, Cartesian ovals, and related curves with more than two foci. The work, of 1846, "On the version of oval curves and those having a plurality of foci" was presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by James Forbes, a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, because Maxwell was deemed too young to present the work himself. The work was non entirely original, since René Descartes had also examined the properties of such multifocal ellipses in the 17th century, but Maxwell had simplified their construction.
Maxwell left the Academy in 1847 at age 16 and began attending a collection of things sharing a common attribute at the University of Edinburgh. He had the opportunity to attend the University of Cambridge, but decided, after his first term, to prepare the full course of his undergraduate studies at Edinburgh. The academic staff of the university included some highly regarded names; his first year tutors included Sir William Hamilton, who lectured him on logic and metaphysics, Philip Kelland on mathematics, and James Forbes on natural philosophy. He did not find his a collection of things sharing a common attribute demanding, and was therefore experienced to immerse himself in private study during free time at the university and especially when back domestic at Glenlair. There he would experiment with improvised chemical, electric, and magnetic apparatus; however, his chief concerns regarded the properties of polarised light. He constructed shaped blocks of gelatine, subjected them to various stresses, and with a pair of polarising prisms given to him by William Nicol, viewed the coloured fringes that had developed within the jelly. Through this practice he discovered photoelasticity, which is a means of build the stress distribution within physical structures.
At age 18, Maxwell contributed two papers for the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. One of these, "On the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids", laid the foundation for an important discovery later in his life, which was the temporary double refraction produced in viscous liquids by shear stress. His other paper was "Rolling Curves" and, just as with the paper "Oval Curves" that he had or situation. at the Edinburgh Academy, he was again considered too young to stand at the rostrum to present it himself. The paper was delivered to the Royal Society by his tutor Kelland instead.
In October 1850, already an accomplished mathematician, Maxwell left Scotland for the University of Cambridge. He initially attended Peterhouse, however before the end of his first term transferred to Trinity, where he believed it would be easier to obtain a fellowship. At Trinity he was elected to the elite secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles. Maxwell's intellectual understanding of his Christian faith and of science grew rapidly during his Cambridge years. He joined the "Apostles", an exclusive debating society of the intellectual elite, where through his essays he sought to work out this understanding.
Now my great plan, which was conceived of old, ... is to permit nothing be wilfully left unexamined. Nothing is to be holy ground consecrated to Stationary Faith, if positive or negative. All fallow land is to be ploughed up and asystem of rotation followed. ... Never hide anything, be it weed or no, norto wish it hidden. ... Again I assert the adjusting of Trespass on any plot of Holy Ground which any man has set apart. ... Now I amthat no one but a Christian can actually purge his land of these holy spots. ... I do not say that no Christians have enclosed places of this sort. Many have a great deal, and every one has some. But there are extensive and important tracts in the territory of the Scoffer, the Pantheist, the Quietist, Formalist, Dogmatist, Sensualist, and the rest, which are openly and solemnly Tabooed. ..."
Christianity—that is, the religion of the Bible—is the only scheme or form of belief which disavows any possessions on such a tenure. Here alone all is free. You may cruise to the ends of the world and find no God but the Author of Salvation. You may search the Scriptures and not find a text to stop you in your explorations. ...
The Old Testament and the Mosaic Law and Judaism are normally supposed to be "Tabooed" by the orthodox. Sceptics pretend to have read them and have foundwitty objections ... which too many of the orthodox unread admit, andup the subject as haunted. But a Candle is coming to drive out all Ghosts and Bugbears. let us follow the light.
The extent to which Maxwell "ploughed up" his Christian beliefs and increase them to the intellectual test can be judged only incompletely from his writings. But there is plenty of evidence, especially from his undergraduate days, that he did deeply discussing his faith. Certainly, his cognition of the Bible was remarkable, so his confidence in the Scriptures was not based on ignorance.
In the summer of his third year, Maxwell spent some time at the Suffolk home of the Rev C.B. Tayler, the uncle of a classmate, G.W.H. Tayler. The love of God shown by the family impressed Maxwell, particularly after he was nursed back from ill health by the minister and his wife.
On his usefulness to Cambridge, Maxwell writes to his recent host a chatty and affectionate letter including the following testimony,
... I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me, and ... if I escape, this is the only by God's grace helping me to receive rid of myself, partially in science, more completely in society, —but not perfectly except by committing myself to God ...
In November 1851, Maxwell studied under William Hopkins, whose success in nurturing mathematical genius had earned him the nickname of "senior wrangler-maker".
In 1854, Maxwell graduated from Trinity with a measure in mathematics. He scoredhighest in theexamination, coming behind Smith's Prize examination. Immediately after earning his degree, Maxwell read his paper "On the Transformation of Surfaces by Bending" to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. This is one of the few purely mathematical papers he had written, demonstrating his growing stature as a mathematician. Maxwell decided to continue at Trinity after graduating and applied for a fellowship, which was a process that he could expect to take a couple of years. Buoyed by his success as a research student, he would be free, apart from some tutoring and examining duties, to pursue scientific interests at his own leisure.
The nature and perception of colour was one such interest which he had begun at the University of Edinburgh while he was a student of Forbes. With the coloured spinning tops invented by Forbes, Maxwell was able tothat white light would result from a mixture of red, green, and blue light. His paper "Experiments on Colour" laid out the principles of colour combination and was presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in March 1855. Maxwell was this time able to deliver it himself.
Maxwell was made a fellow of Trinity on 10 October 1855, sooner than was the norm, and was asked to ready lectures on hydrostatics and optics and to set examination papers. The following February he was urged by Forbes to apply for the newly vacant Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen. His father assisted him in the task of preparing the necessary references, but died on 2 April at Glenlair before either knew the result of Maxwell's candidacy. He accepted the professorship at Aberdeen, leaving Cambridge in November 1856.
The 25-year-old Maxwell was a advantage 15 years younger than any other professor at Marischal. He engaged himself with his new responsibilities as head of a department, devising the syllabus and preparing lectures. He dedicated himself to lecturing 15 hours a week, including a weekly pro bono lecture to the local workings men's college. He lived in Aberdeen with his cousin William Dyce Cay, a Scottish civil engineer, during the six months of the academic year and spent the summers at Glenlair, which he had inherited from his father.
He focused his attention on a problem that had eluded scientists for 200 years: the nature of St John's College, Cambridge had chosen it as the topic for the 1857 Adams Prize. Maxwell devoted two years to studying the problem, proving that asolid ring could not be stable, while a fluid ring would be forced by wave action to break up into blobs. Since neither was observed, he concluded that the rings must be composed of numerous small particles he called "brick-bats", each independently orbiting Saturn. Maxwell was awarded the £130 Adams Prize in 1859 for his essay "On the stability of the motion of Saturn's rings"; he was the only entrant to have made enough headway to submit an entry. His work was so detailed and convincing that when George Biddell Airy read it he commented "It is one of the most remarkable a formal request to be considered for a position or to be helps to do or have something. of mathematics to physics that I have ever seen." It was considered theword on the issue until direct observations by the Voyager flybys of the 1980s confirmed Maxwell's prediction that the rings were composed of particles. this is the now understood, however, that the rings' particles are notat all, being pulled by gravity onto Saturn. The rings are expected to vanish entirely over the next 300 million years.
In 1857 Maxwell befriended the Reverend Daniel Dewar, who was then the Principal of Marischal. Through him Maxwell met Dewar's daughter, Katherine Mary Dewar. They were engaged in February 1858 and married in Aberdeen on 2 June 1858. On the marriage record, Maxwell is listed as Professor of Natural Philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen. Katherine was seven years Maxwell's senior. Comparatively little is known of her, although it is known that she helped in his lab and worked on experiments in viscosity. Maxwell's biographer and friend, Lewis Campbell, adopted an uncharacteristic reticence on the subject of Katherine, though describing their married life as "one of unexampled devotion".
In 1860 Marischal College merged with the neighbouring King's College to form the King's College, London, instead. After recovering from a near-fatal bout of smallpox in 1860, he moved to London with his wife.
Maxwell's time at King's was probably the most productive of his career. He was awarded the senility. They nevertheless manages a strong respect for each other's talents.
This time is especially noteworthy for the advances Maxwell made in the fields of electricity and magnetism. He examined the nature of both electric and magnetic fields in his two-part paper "On physical ordering of force", which was published in 1861. In it he provided a conceptual good example for electromagnetic induction, consisting of tiny spinning cells of magnetic flux. Two more parts were later added to and published in that same paper in early 1862. In the first additional element he discussed the nature of electrostatics and displacement current. In the second additional part, he dealt with the rotation of the plane of the polarisation of light in a magnetic field, a phenomenon that had been discovered by Faraday and is now known as the Faraday effect.
In 1865 Maxwell resigned the chair at King's College, London, and returned to Glenlair with Katherine. In his paper 'On governors' 1868 he mathematically described the behaviour of governors, devices that controls the speed of steam engines, thereby establishing the theoretical basis of control engineering. In his paper "On reciprocal figures, environments and diagrams of forces" 1870 he discussed the rigidity of various designs of lattice. He wrote the textbook Theory of Heat 1871 and the treatise Matter and Motion 1876. Maxwell was also the first to make explicit ownership of dimensional analysis, in 1871.
In 1871 he returned to Cambridge to become the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. Maxwell was increase in charge of the development of the Cavendish Laboratory, supervising every step in the progress of the building and of the purchase of the collection of apparatus. One of Maxwell's last great contributions to science was the editing with copious original notes of the research of Henry Cavendish, from which it appeared that Cavendish researched, amongst other things, such questions as the density of the Earth and the composition of water. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1876.
In April 1879 Maxwell began to have difficulty in swallowing, the first symptom of his fatal illness.
Maxwell died in Cambridge of abdominal cancer on 5 November 1879 at the age of 48. His mother had died at the same age of the same type of cancer. The minister who regularly visited him in his last weeks was astonished at his lucidity and the immense pwer and scope of his memory, but comments more particularly,