Life of James Clerk Maxwell

I recently read Basil Mahon's short biography of James Clerk Maxwell titled The man who changed everything. Maxwell, of course, is considered the greatest physicist of the 19th century for creating the field theory of electromagnetism, which retains its central place in physics to this day. Electromagnetic waves, which are the bedrock of much of 20th century technology including Radio, TV, Radar and WiFi were purely theoretical consequences of this theory; nobody was looking for them or had even suspected their existence before Maxwell came along. And of course that is not all. Among other things, he was the first person to show that combinations of R,G,B suffice to create any given color and to take world's first color photograph; he showed that the rings of Saturn cannot be solid/fluid, they must be made of fine particles; he worked out a way to assign velocities to molecules in kinetic theory of gases; and he was a founding director of the Cavendish laboratory, later a powerhouse of science. Some of these achievements I was familiar with from reading other popular science accounts; the high points for me with this book were Mahon's narration of the path Maxwell followed while arriving at his great theory and the picture of Maxwell the man that emerges. In the former we see that Maxwell first tried to create mechanistic models of electromagentic phenomenon, first in terms of an incompressible, weightless fluid and later in terms of spinning low density cells (vortices) spanning space before finally settling down on the equations based on dynamics. In the latter, we meet a person who is not only immensly gifted, but also generous, good humoured, helpful and a witty writer. Not the popular conception of Genius! I can't resist giving a couple of examples of the 'wit' part.

In an essay titled 'Is Autobiography Possible?' he wrote when he was a member of Apostles he says, "The stomach pump of the confessional ought to be used only in cases of manifest poisoning. More gentle remedies are better for the constitution in ordinary cases."

And in a letter to a friend he says, "He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fell into despair, not tomorrow's, lest he becomes a visionary - not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work, nor yet that which only remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his actions. Happy is the man who can recognise in the work of today a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiement of the work of eternity."

There are many such gems. The book was an interesting, fruitful read, and getting to know Maxwell was certainly a joy.