Father of Modern Physics: James Clerk Maxwell

I'm very excited to tell you that this video is a collaboration with the excellent YouTube channel Arbor Nash complex things explained simply so while we're going to go into depth on the interesting history in the life of the scientist James Clerk Maxwell over at Arbor - they're going to dig much more into the details of Maxwell's equations so be sure to check out their video at the link in the description and while you're there subscribe to their channel for most a career in science is not a path to fame and notoriety certainly there are some scientists whose names are household names associated with certain periods in history people like Capretta Newton or Einstein but for every scientists whose name you recognize there are hundreds more who have contributed to the sum of human knowledge and whose names are relatively unknown among those the man that Einstein described as the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton he's been called the father of modern physics the founder of the field of electrical engineering a 1999 survey of physicists declared him to be the third most important physicist of all time voted only behind Newton and Einstein you might never have heard his name before but the life of James Clerk Maxwell deserves to be remembered Maxwell was born June 13th 1831 to a family of comfortable means his father John Clark was a member of the minor nobility his family recognized from a young age that he had an insatiable inquisitiveness in a naturally gifted mind by the age of 8 he was quoting Milton and large chunks of the Book of Psalms his mother died of abdominal cancer after an unsuccessful operation that same year after the death of his mother his early schooling passed to his father and Jane K his aunt who said of his education that it was humiliating to be asked so many questions wooden couldn't answer by a child he was briefly in disastrously tutored by a 16 year old to us said to be cruel to him On February 12 1842 James's father took him to see an interesting show demonstration of electric propulsion a magnetic force by Scottish inventor Robert Davidson Davidson's electrically powered machine such as a printing press a lathe and a small power carriage were on display in we have served the system an inspiration to the ten-year-old Maxwell was sent to school at the Edinburgh Academy but struggled socially the first year classes have been full so he join the second year with boys older than him when he first arrived he was given the cruel nickname Dafty apparently because he arrived wearing homemade shoes and a tunic he made a few friends such as future scholars Lewis Campbell and Peter Guthrie Tait at 13 he won the school's mathematics medal and first prize in both English and poetry in 1845 he wrote his first scientific paper describing mechanical means of drawing mathematical curves using a piece of twine as well as properties of ellipses and Cartesian ovals the paper was presented by a professor from the University of Edinburgh as they thought him too young to present himself while not entirely original the work that Symphony construction of multifocal ellipses he joined the University of Edinburgh two years later at 16 well he had a number of well-regarded teachers he didn't find the work demanding and spent a considerable amount of time on his own projects he did his own experiments on polarized light with improvised equipment using gelatin and a pair of polarizing prisms he discovered photo elasticity means of measuring stress distribution in a physical structure at 18 he contributed two papers for the Royal Society in Edinburgh and again was considered too young to present his tutor presented instead in October of 1815 began attending the University of Cambridge eventually settling in Trinity College there he joined with the elite secret society of intellectuals called the Cambridge apostles he graduated in 1854 with a degree in mathematics second in his class and was declared equal with the first after examination that win him the Smith's prize which was given annually to two mathematics or physics students he applied for a fellowship at Trinity and in 1855 finally presented his own paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh the paper focused on color and color blindness in 1856 he won the straighten gold medal Edinburgh highest mathematics prize he became a fellow at Cambridge in 1855 but shortly accepted a position as the chair of natural philosophy at Marcus Cole College in Aberdeen when he got the job he was just 25 years old a decade or more younger than most of the professor's here he decided to focus on a new problem Saturn's rings Galileo had first seen the Rings in 1610 and in 1655 Christian Higgins recognize them as rings but the nature of the ring still wasn't understood scientists weren't sure how they could be solid without breaking up drifting away or crashing into the planet the topic had also been chosen for the 1857 adams prize of prestigious scientific award given out by cambridge maxwell proved that a solid ring wouldn't be stable and that a liquid ring would break into blobs because of wave action he concluded that it must be made up of what he called brickbats numerous small particles all orbiting Saturn he was the only researcher who had accomplished enough to submit an entry so he won the 130-pound adams prize one astronomer said the work was one of the most remarkable applications of mathematics to physics that I have ever seen well up the college he became friends with the school's president Reverend Daniel do R and fell in love with his daughter Catherine they married in 1858 fairly little is known about Catherine although she did work on experiments regarding viscosity - Cal College emerged with another to become the University of Aberdeen so he ended up in the chair of natural philosophy at King's College in London among as many interests was one that also captivated Newton color vision he wrote papers concerning human perception of color colorblindness and color theory his paper on the theory of color vision presented to the Royal Society in 1860 one of the Rumford medal given for an outstandingly important recent discovery in the field of thermal or optical properties he used linear algebra to prove Thomas Young's trichromatic color theory that the human eye had three different kinds of photoreceptors that were sensitive to different wavelengths in his paper and later in practice he described how taking three black-and-white photos with red green and blue filters and then superimposing them with the projections produced the first durable color photograph this paper also theorized that colour blindness was brought on by the absence of one of the three kinds of photoreceptors NASA did significant work regarding the kinetic theory of gases establishing that temperature of a gas is entirely a product of the speed of the individual molecules importantly he also realized that temperature is a product of the average speed of the gases cuz some of the molecules would speed up or slow down through collisions he produced what is now called the Maxwell Boltzmann distribution which was the first statistical law of physics and showed that the particles within a gas would have a distribution of speeds he predicted what that distribution would be it showed that the second law of thermodynamics that heat flows from higher temperature objects to lower ones as a statistical law although some individual particles may disobey the law while the majority followed it his time at King's College also brought him into regular contact with michael faraday while faraday was 40 years maxwell senior and showing signs of dementia still the pair respected each other's work Faraday had done pioneering work in electromagnetism another field that Maxwell would make breakthroughs in as early as 1855 had written a paper on Faraday's lines of force simplifying Faraday's work into the relationship between magnetism and electricity he synthesized this understanding to a set of 20 equations later simplified into four partial differential equations known as Maxwell's equations these equations from a major part of the foundation of classical electromagnetism optics and electrical circuits his work on electromagnetism would have profound implications in 1862 he calculated that the speed of the propagation of an electromagnetic field was approximately speed of light he explained that he could scarcely avoid the conclusion that light and magnetism were products of the same phenomena thus unifying some of nature's fundamental forces his paper a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field showed that light and magnetism are affectations of the same substance effectively turning electricity and magnetism into a single system electromagnetism he turned Faraday's lines of force into an electromagnetic field understanding that light behaved as a wave through space Einstein would later say that the special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell's equations Heinrich Hertz later experimentally demonstrated the existence of Maxwell's theorized magnetic field next well theorized that these electromagnetic waves should be able to be reflected and refracted the same way as light this was an important precursor understanding radio waves and therefore radio communication his theory is the basis of our understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum today that is a large spectrum of which visible light is only a small part even more impressive he did this theoretically and mathematically without the experimental evidence when author characterized this discovery as one of the greatest achievements of 19th century physics resigned his chair of King's College in 1865 and returned to his home at his estate man lair with Catherine he offered contributions to other fields discussing the rigidity of various forms of laughes the textbook the theory of heat and a paper setting forth the theoretical basis for control engineering he returned to Cambridge in 1871 to become the first Cavendish professor of physics and was put in charge of putting together the Cavendish laboratory which opened in 1874 Maxwell edited and published a collection and notes on Cavendish's work which brought to light a considerable amount of research Cavendish had done that was previously unknown in April of 1879 he began having trouble swallowing was a first sign of a much greater illness he died in Cambridge of abdominal cancer at the age of 48 same cancer that had claimed his mother numerous plaques mark his equations in life in the home where he was born in Edinburgh now houses a foundation bearing his name a statue was unveiled in 2008 commissioned by the Royal Society of Edinburgh while he might not be as famous as other scientists his work was truly transformative although theoretical and mathematical physicist and Cambridge professor Malcolm Wong air explained Maxwell's relative obscurity was because his contributions are not easily understood by the layperson his work is mostly relegated to textbooks his praise mostly comes from other physicists but his contributions and their importance is difficult to overstate Carl Sagan said that though Maxwell is entirely unknown except to a few other academic scientists he has done more to shape our civilization than any 10 recent presidents and prime ministers Einstein kept three portraits in his Princeton study of Newton Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell Einstein famously corrected a man who said that Einstein had accomplished great things by standing on Newton's shoulders by saying no I doubt I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell Stephen Hawking called him the physicist physicist and Max Planck said he achieved greatness unequaled in his life Maxwell was described as wry kind and hard-working he never seemed to seek fame the pursuit of knowledge seemed to be enough for him Charlie before his death he told a colleague I have been thinking how very gently I've been dealt with I have never received a violent shove in all my life my only desire that I can have is to like David serve my own generation by the will of God and then to fall asleep [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 163,075

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, electromagnetism, physics, science, james maxwell

Id: NuWEqE4k230

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 25 2020