The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Basil Mahon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The normally irascible Isaac Newton remarked in 1676 …….. If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders [sic] of Giants. In turn, Einstein, when told that he had done great things because he stood on Newton's shoulders; Einstein replied: No I don't. I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell.

The influence of James Clerk Maxwell runs all through our daily lives. His electromagnetic waves made possible ALL forms of wireless communication. Colour TV and mobile phone screens work on the three-colour principle that he demonstrated. Pilots and astronauts fly their craft by control systems which derive from his work. Bridges and other structures were designed using his reciprocal diagrams and photoelastic techniques.

Maxwell started a revolution in the way physicists look at the world. He introduced statistical methods in physics. His droll molecule sized creature, Maxwell’s Demon, was the first example of the thought experiment so frequently used by Einstein and memorably by Schrodinger with his famously lamentable cat. At Cambridge he set up the Cavendish Lab where the electron and the atomic structure were discovered by Thomson and Rutherford later on.

His discoveries helped usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for such fields as special relativity and quantum mechanics. Many physicists regard Maxwell as the 19th-century scientist having the greatest influence on 20th-century physics. His contributions to the science are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. In the millennium poll—a survey of the 100 most prominent physicists—Maxwell was voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein. On the centenary of Maxwell's birthday, Einstein described Maxwell's work as the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.

Maxwell's A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism: Vol. 2 is probably, after Newton'sThe Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, the most renowned book in the history of physics. It is said that if you trace every line of modern physical research to its starting point you come back to Maxwell.

Maxwell achieved all this in a short span of life – he died at the age of 48.

So why is he not as well-known as Newton and Einstein or even Schrodinger, Planck or Bohr? Apparently he was painfully modest (laid back in today's argot) and never strove to promote his work; nor was there anyone who did it for him. Most importantly many of his ideas were way ahead of their time. Physicists recognized his work later, once experimental proof became available.

An engrossing book indeed.

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