The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell

This book describes the life & achievements of James Clerk Maxwell, the man who first identified the relationship between electricity, magnetism & light. He was the first to demonstrate mathematically that electricity, magnetism and light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon; the electromagnetic field - with electromagnetic waves. This is regarded by many as one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time; ranking him with Newton, Faraday & Einstein.Mahon's book is extremely well written and is at times hard to put down; this despite his explanations of some very sophisticated physics & mathematics, which he achieves with clarity. Maxwell's life, personality, relationships and achievements are described chronologically; schooling in Scotland, university education in Edinburgh & Cambridge and academic posts beginning and ending at Cambridge. He was a lifelong friend of both William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and P G Tait; the three regularly exchanging ideas. Maxwell was a gentle caring and religious man with a mischievous though never cruel sense of humour. Although the author devotes a good deal of his text to describing these endearing aspects of Maxwell's life, it is his enormous scientific and engineering achievements which shine through.In addition to his achievements in electromagnetism, Maxwell proposed the first ever statistical law in physics; that is the Maxwell distribution of molecular velocities, the first & perhaps the most inspired step towards the development of statistical thermodynamics and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution or molecular energies, which is so important in understanding for example the relationship between temperature and vapour pressure. This alone, without his electromagnetic theory, would be sufficient to mark him as `an all time great' of science. However, there was much more!James also determined the conditions under which Saturn's rings would be stable which won him Cambridge's Adams Prize and the accolade from the Astronomer Royal that his work was one of the most remarkable applications of mathematics to physics that he had ever seen.Maxwell demonstrated the principle by which we see colours and took the world's first colour photograph; he wrote a paper which became the basis of modern control theory; he used polarized light to reveal strain patterns in structure and invented a powerful graphical method for calculating the forces in any framework, techniques which became standard engineering practice.Perhaps most importantly, with the development of his theories on for example electromagnetic fields, perception of colour and statistical mechanics, Maxwell started a revolution in the way physicists look at the world. He began to think that the objects and forces that we see are only our limited perception of an underlying truth that we cannot understand but can describe mathematically.Our author claims that `It is sometimes said, with no more than slight overstatement that if you trace every line of modern physical research to its starting point you come back to Maxwell'. CA Coulson said of Maxwell, that `there is scarcely a single topic that he touched upon which he did not change almost beyond recognition.' Albert Einstein said `one scientific epoch ended and another began with James Clerk Maxwell'.James Clerk Maxwell really was `The man who changed everything'; at least in physics. Mahon's book is first rate as a biography, as a history of science and as a compelling read: five stars of course.

The Man who Changed Everything by Basil Mahon is a wonderful book which outlines not only Maxwell's scientific achievements but his humble inspirational life. As an aspiring physics University student, this is the first book I've read on Maxwell, before finishing it my knowledge of Maxwell was extremely limited.James Clerk Maxwell was born in Scotland, as a child he was laughed at in school for wearing homemade clothes, which gave him the name 'Daftie'. Maxwell was known to have a funny, humble, charitable and loving personality to all those he met.Maxwell wrote his first paper when he was 14 on ovals and curves which was last discussed by Descartes! He would later develop the ideas for statistical analysis (Maxwell-Boltzman Distribution), thought experiments (Maxwell's Demon), thermodynamics, optics (how the eye perceives images), perception of colour (the first colour photograph), the basis for control theory, information theory, and so much more! Maxwell is probably the most underrated scientist ever, his contributions to mankind is unbelievable.Those that have heard of Maxwell know him for 'Maxwell's Equations' where he unified electricity and magnetism into one entity and which is now known to be a fundamental force of the universe. Maxwell was then able to theoretically calculate the speed of light perfectly! I won't even try to explain how much electricity has helped society and mankind, but just so you know it's all thanks to Maxwell.Maxwell's equations consist of 4 equations: 1. Guass' Law of Electric fields, 2. Guass' Law of Magnetic fields, 3. Faraday's Law and 4. The Ampere-Maxwell Law. Now wait a minute! Maxwell seems to have barely done anything, just changed a bit of Ampere's law and taken all the credit for the whole electromagnetic theory. That's what I first thought! Maxwell has done a lot more than that, a conceptual basis for electromagnetism to understand why the laws worked, to link electricity and much more. He developed the idea of flux, fields through his seemingly strange analogy of 'rotating wheels and idle wheels' (remember the electron wasn't discovered until 30 years later or so!). A important point to also mention is that Maxwell was then able to establish light as electromagnetic waves! And calculate its velocity!Maxwell influenced many scientists during his lifetime but also after, Boltzman, Einstein, Feyman, and much more! I don't know how much more I can stress Maxwell's achievements, it is truly sad that he is not given the real credit he deserves, as people nowadays would of heard of Newton and Einstein but Maxwell is definitely up there in their league.I learnt so much from reading Mahon's book, although it is does get rather dry when the author tries to explain scientific concepts and such. It is also quite difficult to undersand certain mathematical functions such as curl, div, without any further maths knowledge. Maxwell's concept of his 'rotating wheels and idle wheels' was rather difficult to take in but overall the book is relatively okay to read, certainly fun and educating! Recommended for scientists but also those who just have a general interest! Much can be learnt about Maxwell's life just from this short book.Don't forget that without Maxwell's equations you wouldn't have the computer to even read this review!

I have read a number of biographies on Maxwell, starting from that of his school friend Lewis Campbell, which was written very soon after his death, and hence is reticent over some aspects of his life. However, it is one of the.primary sources for all the subsequent ones. Of these, in my opinion, this one is the best for the reader who can appreciate the importance of his work in many areas, without being able to follow the detailed technical arguments. Peter Higgs a while back summed Maxwell up with admirable conciseness: "there were Archimedes, Newton, Maxwell and Einstein". No need to say more about Maxwell's scientific status. However, there is a human story there as well: Maxwell seems to have been one of the nicest people ever to walk this earth, as well as one of the most brilliant. This book gets a good balance for the non-scientific reader (it almost persuaded me that I understood what a "curl" was). It also gives an excellent picture of the other workers at the time in the various fields in which Maxwell worked, and Maxwell's relationships with them.

I teach physics and was already an admirer of Maxwell but I didn't appreciate the number and diversity of his contributions to the subject. Here was a man who combined supreme intelligence and insight with hard work and perseverance. As the author pointed out his achievements have never received the recognition they deserve partly because his ideas were so far ahead of their time and because the credit often went to the experimentalists who subsequently proved his predictions. An excellent read.