When, in 1873, James Clerk Maxwell2 wrote his now famous Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, he wrote in the preface to the book that his purpose was essentially that of explaining Faraday’s ideas (published in Experimental Researches in Electricity in 1839) into a mathematical and, therefore, more universal form. He makes it amply clear that his treatise is a sort of summary or unification of the knowledge in electrical and magnetic fields as put forward by others, including those who preceded Faraday (Ampere, Gauss, Coulomb, and others). We might add that the notation we use today to write Maxwell’s equations was introduced by Oliver Heaviside3 almost 20 years after Maxwell’s theory appeared. If you were to read Maxwell’s book, you might not recognize the equations written in the previous chapters or in this. What then is Maxwell’s unique contribution? Why do we normally refer to the electromagnetic field equations as “Maxwell’s equations”? Surely, it is more than simply because he summarized what others have done.
When, in 1873, James Clerk Maxwell2 wrote his now famous Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, he wrote in the preface to the book that his purpose was essentially that of explaining Faraday’s ideas (published in Experimental Researches in Electricity in 1839) into a mathematical and, therefore, more universal form. He makes it amply clear that his treatise is a sort of summary or unification of the knowledge in electrical and magnetic fields as put forward by others, including those who preceded Faraday (Ampere, Gauss, Coulomb, and others). We might add that the notation we use today to write Maxwell’s equations was introduced by Oliver Heaviside3 almost 20 years after Maxwell’s theory appeared. If you were to read Maxwell’s book, you might not recognize the equations written in the previous chapters or in this. What then is Maxwell’s unique contribution? Why do we normally refer to the electromagnetic field equations as “Maxwell’s equations”? Surely, it is more than simply because he summarized what others have done.
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