James Clerk Maxwell1831 – 1879

BSHM Gresham Lecture 31st October 2012

Raymond FloodGresham Professor of Geometry

Key dates in the life of James Clerk Maxwell

DATE EVENT1831 Born at 14 India Street, Edinburgh

and grew up at Glenlair1841 - 1847 Edinburgh Academy1847 - 1850 Edinburgh University1850 – 1856 Cambridge University1856 - 1860 Marischal College, Aberdeen1860 - 1865 King’s College, London1865 - 1871 Glenlair1871 – 1879 Cambridge University

James with his mother, Frances, in about 1834

James’ father, John, in about 1850

Edinburgh Academy, 1840

Edinburgh University Library

Stokes theorem: Question 8 in the 1854 Smith’s prize examination paper in which Maxwell shared first prize

with E.J. Routh

Marischal College, Aberdeen.

Maxwell, Katherine and Toby in 1869

Inaugural lecture, King’s College 1860

“In this class I hope you will learn not merely results, or formulae applicable to cases that may possibly occur in our practice afterwards, but the principles on which those formulae depend, and without which the formulae are mere mental rubbish. I know the tendency of the human mind is to do anything rather than think. But mental labour is not thought, and those who have with labour acquired the habit of application, often find it much easier to get up a formula than to master a principle”

Glenlair, family home of the Maxwells in about 1884

Newton’s memorial in Westminster Abbey

James Clerk Maxwell buried with his parents and wife

in Parton Churchyard near Glenlair

There is scarcely a single topic that he touched upon that he did not change almost beyond

recognition Charles Coulson

• Saturn’s rings• Colour vision• Kinetic Theory• Electromagnetism

Saturn’s rings

Saturn’s rings

Saturn’s rings

Colour Vision

Colour Vision

On the theory of

compound colours in

1860

Tartan Ribbon

Kinetic Theory of Gases

Rudolf Clausius1822 - 1888

If you go at 17 miles per minute and take a totally new course 1,700,000,000 times a second, where will you be in an hourLetter from Maxwell to Tait

Ludwig Boltzmann1844 - 1906

Oersted’s experiment

Michael Faraday 1791 - 1867

Electromagnetism

Faraday delivering a Christmas Lecture at the Royal institution in 1856

Iron filings scattered on paper over a magnet show the lines of force

Model of molecular vortices and electric particles

we can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric

and magnetic phenomena

Einstein on Maxwell

Since Maxwell’s time, physical reality has been thought of as represented by continuous fields, and not capable of any mechanical interpretation. This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton

Maxwell’s sense of fun is shown in this poem to Thomson’sgalvanometer (an

instrument for measuring current)

Lectures At the Museum of London

• Ghosts of Departed Quantities: Calculus and its Limits Tuesday 25 September 2012

• Polynomials and their Roots Tuesday 6 November 2012

• From One to Many Geometries Tuesday 11 December 2012

• The Queen of Mathematics Tuesday 22 January 2013

• Are Averages Typical? Tuesday 19 February 2013

• Modelling the World Tuesday 19 March 2013