How Professor Maxwell changed the world

The Economist ^ | Apr 2nd 2011 | J.P.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

God said:

... and there was light!

[frithguild]

[Jacquerie]

But remember, only leftist artists and authors are truly creative.

[count-your-change]

Maxwell and others like him were the heroes of my tender years along with Curie, Rutherford, Fleming.

[allmendream]

Always been partial to Faraday myself.

[chimera]

Those are the familiar "Maxwell's Equations" we all learned in E&M, but they aren't the ones Maxwell wrote. If you read his original Treatise, you will find 20 differential equations in ordinary differential equation form. These are the original Maxwell's Equations.

William Rowan Hamilton (of Hamiltonian Mechanics fame) re-cast Maxwell's original equations into a shorter version, which were 10 differential equations in ordinary differential equation form. It was not until Oliver Heaviside invented operator calculus that the form we see today was first expressed, so these are more formally known as the Maxwell-Heaviside Equations of electromagnetism.

Heaviside himself was criticized by the more rigorous mathematicians of his day for using operator calculus without really understanding the underlying mathematical theory. He was said to have remarked, somewhat raffishly, that he didn't understand the process of digestion, either, but that did not stop him from enjoying his dinner.

[Tribune7]

Maxwell was a devout Evangelical Christian.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Maxwell's Equations

[DManA]

Maxwell remains the great unsung hero of human progress,

Maxwell is well remembered and revered among people who actually contribute to human progress.

[Steely Tom]

Ah, ya beat me to it.

[chimera]

Sorry, the Hamilton reformulation used quaternions, not ordinary differential calculus.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

There was a wonderful article on Heaviside in the IEEE spectrum about 15 years ago by a Dartmouth Professor. Heaviside is one of history’s underappreciated geniuses, for sure.

[count-your-change]

Another giant!

[chimera]

Yeah, I always do a little aside about him when we talk about the (Heaviside) step function in linear system theory. We truly stand on the shoulders of giants.

[Tolsti2]

That’s what I thought. He’s not up there with Newton or Einstein, but anyone with a reasonable high school education should have heard of him at least.

In fact, his name was used more than any others I think.

[Erasmus]

!

[Young Werther]

The are other feminon2 to be explored!

And this is just one current!

[LibWhacker]

Except for one thing: there is no such ****ing thing as “fields and invisible physical lines of force(TM)” in real life. Kind of like Santa Claus and the Easter rabbit...

These so-called "scientists" are so full of it.

Sheesh, fields and physical lines of force could feed the monkeys flying out of Hillary Clinton’s ample derriere. Maxwell Schmaxwell.

I missed my calling. I spend all my time making sh!x up and posting it on FR for free when I could have got my PhD in making sh!x up and been paid for it.

Magical fields, imaginary numbers and other crap... similar things were concocted to create the Global Warming Crisis.

Ignoring reality in an attempt to support a theory. It's what these scientists do. It's just like GODZILLA. He is the 'invisible lines of Maxwell' that destroyed Japan. The reason no one has ever actually SEEN Godzilla, is because he is 'invisible'.

I admit I don't get it. But neither do 'they'. Their 'theories' are just ways to explain what they don't 'get' yet, ya'know?

</s/s/s/s/s>

IBTSH (In before the science haters)

[onedoug]

But that it powers our society, and did pretty good jobs on the Japanese to end WWII.