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Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics

Nancy Forbes,

Basil Mahon

4.25 · Rating details · 1,039 ratings · 116 reviews

The story of two brilliant nineteenth-century scientists who discovered the electromagnetic field, laying the groundwork for the amazing technological and theoretical breakthroughs of the twentieth century.

Two of the boldest and most creative scientists of all time were Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). This is the story of how these two men ...more

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Hardcover, 320 pages

Published March 11th 2014 by Prometheus Books

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Feb 17, 2017 Max rated it it was amazing

Shelves: physics

Newton credited his success to “standing on the shoulders of giants”. A British reporter asked Albert Einstein if he had stood on the shoulders of Newton. Einstein replied, “That statement is not quite right; I stood on Maxwell’s shoulders.” Maxwell could be said to have stood on Faraday’s shoulders. Forbes and Mahon’s book lays out how they transformed physics paving the way for the momentous discoveries of the twentieth century.

Michael Faraday’s experiments with electricity and magnetism led n Newton credited his success to “standing on the shoulders of giants”. A British reporter asked Albert Einstein if he had stood on the shoulders of Newton. Einstein replied, “That statement is not quite right; I stood on Maxwell’s shoulders.” Maxwell could be said to have stood on Faraday’s shoulders. Forbes and Mahon’s book lays out how they transformed physics paving the way for the momentous discoveries of the twentieth century.

Michael Faraday’s experiments with electricity and magnetism led not only to the generator and electric motor, but a new understanding of how these forces worked. James Clerk Maxwell used Faraday’s findings to mathematically define the relationship between electricity and magnetism and in turn electromagnetic waves and the nature of light. Their work led to the breakthroughs of Planck, Einstein, Feynman and many others culminating in modern field theories including today’s Standard Model.

Faraday was born into a poor London family. As a bookbinder’s apprentice he seized the opportunity to read and educate himself. Fascinated by science he secured a lowly position helping the famous chemist Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution. With hard work he established himself as a respected scientist, despite his lowly origins in a classist society. His unusual background for a scientist of the times would enable him to see things in ways others did not. With no education in mathematics or Newtonian principles, he relied on his disciplined keen observations, basing his ideas solely on his experimental results. He supported his work with meticulous notes and publications.

In 1800 Alessandro Volta invented the battery. Now electric current could readily be produced at will. Twenty years later Hans Christian Oersted showed that electric current caused a magnetic needle to move aligning itself at a right angle to the wire. Faraday then built a primitive form of electric motor, in which a magnet moved continuously around an electric wire. Faraday experimented with electricity and magnetism for years discovering electromagnetic induction. Unencumbered by thoughts of Newton’s instantaneous action at a distance or Kant’s theory of attraction and repulsion, Faraday recognized that circular “lines of force”, a term he coined, mediated magnetism and electricity.

In 1830 Faraday built a dynamo, in which a metal disc spinning in between a horseshoe magnet generated electric current. Faraday had realized that the lines of force were an electric field and that if an electric field could induce a magnetic one, the reverse would also be true. He reached these conclusions without mathematics. He was able to picture this force as waves similar to light or sound. His publications explaining his discoveries contained no formulas.

In 1845 a young prodigy, William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), read Faraday’s publications. Other scientists did not really believe Faraday’s lines of force were real. The seventeen year old Thomson did describing them in a paper with the same mathematics used to depict the flow of heat through a metal bar. That same year Faraday first used the term “magnetic field” in describing his experiments. He also gave a rare talk about his beliefs which he knew would be ridiculed. He postulated vibrating electric and magnetic lines of force pervading the universe with no need of the commonly accepted aether. The vibrations which he called “Ray-vibrations” were the lines of force. Light was a manifestation of these vibrations.

As expected, Faraday’s “magnetic field” and “lines of force” were quickly dismissed by his peers. William Thomson moved on to other things, but in the 1850’s he suggested to a young James Clerk Maxwell that he read Faraday’s publications. In 1857 Maxwell published his findings on Faraday’s theory. Faraday was thrilled to find a brilliant mathematically trained scientist embrace his ideas. Maxwell compared the movement of an electric field to that of fluids. It moved from areas of high potential to low just as fluid moved from higher pressure to low. Adapting mathematics used to describe the flow of fluids he was able to encapsulate Faraday’s lines of force in a way more familiar to conventional scientists.

Maxwell, born in 1831 in Scotland, was forty years younger than Faraday but blossomed quickly. He graduated from Cambridge, won the highly competitive Smith Prize and became a fellow of Trinity College. He wrote his paper reformulating Faraday’s ideas mathematically and moved on to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College in his native Scotland. He was now twenty-five. In his late twenties he won the Adams Prize for showing mathematically that Saturn’s rings must be composed of small separate bodies (as seen later by the Voyager and Cassini space missions). He also formulated the first statistical law in physics, the Maxwell distribution of molecular speeds, paving the way for research in thermodynamics and the use of probability distributions in quantum mechanics.

In 1862 Maxwell wrote a new paper on electromagnetism extending his prior work. Constructing an elaborate mechanical model, he depicted how an electric field could induce a magnetic one which in turn would induce an electric one repeating ad infinitum. With the supporting math he formulated the electromagnetic wave and validated Faraday’s original idea of “Ray-vibrations” from his 1845 speech. Just as with Faraday’s ideas, Maxwell’s were not well received by his peers. His mechanical model was seen as ludicrous. Maxwell said the model was imaginary serving only as an aid to thought, a visualization that helped him develop the mathematics. With that math he calculated the speed of the waves and found them to be the same (within experimental error) as existing measurements of light thus showing both to be the same phenomenon.

Maxwell wrote a subsequent paper without employing any mechanical model, relying on Lagrangian math to show the interactions of the electromagnetic fields. He eschewed the accepted notion of action at a distance showing that the local action of the field explained experimental results. The math proved the waves existence even if we did not know any underlying reality. In a significant departure from accepted practice Maxwell held that a physical hypothesis was not necessary. Presenting his ideas to The Royal Society in 1864, he found little support. Few could understand his math which employed three dimensional vectors. He had dismissed the universally accepted aether without offering any physical alternative. It would be decades before the significance of Maxwell’s achievement would be recognized. Unfortunately Michael Faraday, suffering from dementia, was unable to appreciate Maxwell’s work. He died in 1867 at the age of 75.

In a separate effort writing a book on heat, Maxwell conceptualized what William Thomson called “Maxwell’s demon”, a thought experiment which is still discussed in the study of thermodynamics. Then Maxwell took the job to build, set up, open (1874) and be the first administrator of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, which would be the workplace of famous scientists like Ernest Rutherford, James Watson and many more. In 1879 Maxwell died of cancer, only 48 years old. After his death, a few believers, the Maxwellians, took up his work. One, Oliver Heaviside, simplified the math reducing it to four essential equations, the ones in textbooks today. In Germany in 1888 Heinrich Hertz first demonstrated the waves experimentally, for which The Royal Society awarded him The Rumford Medal. Guglielmo Marconi put the waves to practical use and in 1901 transmitted radio waves from Cornwall to Newfoundland.

Maxwell’s work invoked local action, dismissed action at a distance, eviscerated the aether, proved electromagnetic fields and waves, and showed that reality could be represented by math alone; all ideas essential for twentieth century physics. As Einstein put it, “One scientific epoch ended and another began with James Clerk Maxwell.” Einstein elaborated, “Since Maxwell’s time, physical reality has been thought of as represented by continuous fields and not capable of any mechanical interpretation. This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.” Interestingly in his formulation of electrodynamics, Richard Feynman went back to Maxwell’s more detailed math. Feynman noted, “…ten thousand years from now - there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.”
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Oct 23, 2017 Dan rated it it was amazing

I loved every page of this book. A superb tandem biography of Faraday and Maxwell (and Heaviside to a much smaller degree). It is refreshing to celebrate real heroes, even those who have been dead for 150 years. The last biographical science book that I read that was this good was Simon Singh's Big Bang which I also recommend although it has many superficial biographical vignettes.

This was a non-technical read, although if you don't like science it would be a slog. However there are only three ...more

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Jun 08, 2016 Lemar rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, science, biography, 2010-s

I had thought that the leap forward to modern Physics was from Newton to Einstein. This book shines the spotlight on two true gentlemen of science, Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. They were the ones who freed Physics from a view of the natural world that compared it to a machine like a clock and brought forward the idea that it is the concept of fields of energy that underlie our physical reality.

The affection and awe that Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon feel for these two giants are now m ...more

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Apr 19, 2015 Sean rated it it was amazing

Shelves: physics, 6-star-favorites, _owned, biography

Fantastic book that I could not put down. Very well researched. Real physics discussed, but easy to comprehend. The authors really did great starting with Faraday. I liked the descriptions of his early motor/generator experiments. The science and his life were seamlessly discussed. I was very sad when Faraday died in the book. But what a great transition to Maxwell. And Maxwell really did stand on the shoulders of Faraday. Both of these men make me want to double the number of labs I use as a ph ...more

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May 09, 2017 Nyamka Ganni rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, biography, science, want-to-own, non-fiction, charlie-munger-list

Superb! Mind-blowing!
It was fascinating to learn about how electricity come to become indispensable part of our lives and how it all started with Faraday and many great minds before him!
Absolutely amazing! I'm starting to love physics all over again! Btw, Faraday is my favorite scientist! ...more

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Oct 02, 2016 Book rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science

Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics by Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon

“Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field” is an excellent, readable book on the life and contributions of two science giants, Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. Authors Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon join forces to provide the public a very enjoyable look at how the these two scientists built from successive ideas and discovered the electromagnetic field. This interesti ...more

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May 16, 2017 Graeme Roberts rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Charlene

What a superb book! I have never read an account of the history of science that gave me such deep pleasure. The writing is uniformly elegant and precise, and so lucid that even non-scientists can understand concepts and hypotheses that stumped all but a few physicists at the time. Many physics books, even those intended to make the science understandable to the layperson fail in that regard. You certainly don't need to love physics to enjoy it, but I think that you must be attuned to the great b What a superb book! I have never read an account of the history of science that gave me such deep pleasure. The writing is uniformly elegant and precise, and so lucid that even non-scientists can understand concepts and hypotheses that stumped all but a few physicists at the time. Many physics books, even those intended to make the science understandable to the layperson fail in that regard. You certainly don't need to love physics to enjoy it, but I think that you must be attuned to the great beauty of science.

Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell were very different in background and education, but they were both gentlemen of exemplary character. Maxwell, now considered the greatest scientific genius of the 19th century was both theoretician and experimentalist, able with hard work and consistent use of his unconscious mind to describe experimental results in mathematical terms. He transcended the concrete, mechanical assumptions of Newtonian physics, allowing his successors to further reveal the electromagnetic field. When asked if he had stood on the shoulders of Newton, Albert Einstein replied: "That is not quite right; I stood on Maxwell's shoulders." The book continues, "Maxwell himself would probably have said that it began in 1921 when Michael Faraday imagined a circular force around a current-carrying wire. Together, they gave future generations a model for the interplay of experiment and theory, where each illuminates a path for the other. Neither man was confined to the role commonly assigned to him by casual historians. Faraday, the renowned experimenter, put forward some of the most imaginative and daring theoretical ideas; and Maxwell, the cerebral theoretician, carried out some of the most demanding experiments."

All of the advances that have made modern life better for all human beings have depended in some way on our understanding and application of the electromagnetic field. It would have come eventually, but how apt that such kind, humble, and decent men delivered it. ...more

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Apr 15, 2014 G. Branden rated it really liked it

Forbes and Mahon have written a fabulous scientific biography, presenting us the life stories not only of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, but of the birth of electromagnetism as a field of serious study, unifying the phenomena of electricity and magnetism, thought separate for millennia.

In the final chapter they carry the story beyond Maxwell's death and link it satisfyingly with the development of quantum and special relativity theory.

This book left me wanting to read a biography of Ol ...more

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Jun 20, 2016 Luis Roberto Reyes Romero rated it it was amazing

Inspiring for those of us that, just as Faraday did, believe that true science is about experimentation and curiosity, not ONLY about complicated equations and mathematical proofs.

Also, I learn more on 3 hours about the fundamentals of electromagnetism than from 2 semesters in college.

Good read all around.

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Dec 25, 2019 Thomas Dietert rated it it was amazing

From start to finish, I thoroughly enjoyed this book-- it is exactly what I desired and expected it to be: A comprehensive tandem-biographical account and analysis of both Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell's personal and professional lives, as well as their seminal and groundbreaking experiments and formulations of a coherent theory of electromagnetism that provided the foundations and inspiration for almost all of modern physics. The authors do a fantastic job at blending the historical c From start to finish, I thoroughly enjoyed this book-- it is exactly what I desired and expected it to be: A comprehensive tandem-biographical account and analysis of both Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell's personal and professional lives, as well as their seminal and groundbreaking experiments and formulations of a coherent theory of electromagnetism that provided the foundations and inspiration for almost all of modern physics. The authors do a fantastic job at blending the historical contexts, personal lives, and scientific discoveries of each protagonist, and present the material in such a way that the text satisfies a reader, both emotionally and intellectually.

The book begins with the story of Michael Faraday's early years in London, born to a poor family in the "Elephant and Castle" neighborhood of south London in 1791. The first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book follows Faraday's journey from a poor school boy to that of a distinguished member of the Royal Institution, a science-focused organization that exists in London to this day. Starting out as a book-binder's apprentice, the authors tell the story of Faraday's growing interest in electricity and magnetism throughout his early years, until his eventual partnership (as an apprentice) with Humphrey Davy, a popular lecturer, experimenter, and showman seemingly dedicated to bringing the "cool" side of science (via spectacular displays during weekly Royal Institution meetings) to the upper class of English society.

In his early 20s, Faraday got the chance to travel around western Europe with Davy for 18 months, meeting similarly distinguished scientists as Davy, such as Ampere-- an opportunity without which Faraday might not have ever encountered the inspiration he needed to become the man of science he eventually did. Speaking at length with both his known and soon-to-be scientific idols, observing Davy's discourse with great minds, and participating in such discussions about topics at the edge of human understanding, when Faraday arrived back to England the stage was set for some of the most remarkable, creative, and disciplined experimentation that the scientific world of the 19th century had ever seen.

In the following decades, about from 1810 - 1840, Faraday made incredible headway in the understanding of the behavior of electricity and magnetism. With his seminal "iron-ring" experiment, Faraday found the missing experimental link that proved the duality and relationship of electricity and magnetism. Additionally, by performing hundreds (if not thousands) of meticulously and creatively crafted and documented experiments, he published many papers that continually refined theories of both electro-statics and magnetism, ultimately condensing into a coherent yet novel theory of "electric and magnetic lines of force" (if you wish for elaboration, read the book!). Unfortunately, the one lacking aspect of Faraday's scientific career was that, given his lack of higher-schooling, he was unable to formalize any of his theories using the big guns of calculus or other maths that were prominent or under development at the time; alas, much of his experimental evidence was all but ignored by physicists and thinkers that put mathematics on a higher pedestal than reproducible experimental results.

Luckily for Faraday (and the rest of humanity), the second main character of this historical narrative, James Clerk Maxwell, was born in 1831. From the beginning of his life it was, and in hindsight is, almost obvious that Maxwell would contribute something meaningful to the world. Most all who met the boy in his early life described him as just the right kind of genius: Maxwell was friendly and outgoing, and had a passion for understanding his reality through experimentation, incessantly inquiring the adults around him about the nature of things and how they work. As a teen, Maxwell placed near best-in-class in his formal Edinburgh schooling all the while charismatically participating in social clubs and gatherings centered around rational and creative discourse with his fellow classmates; He was perpetually cracking jokes, writing essays on philosophy, poetry, and songs, and never ceased to inspire those around him, seemingly always asking the right questions to incite the next round of debate!

By the time he reached his early twenties, Maxwell's intellect was ripe for making seminal discoveries. Having just discovered several of Faraday's publications on experiments with electric and magnetic forces, Maxwell was deeply intrigued by the notion of "electric and magnetic lines of force", and how Faraday conceived of their interactions, counter to the scientific dogma at the time-- that electric and magnetic forces propagated through space time in straight lines between two bodies. From then on, amidst other scientific passions, Maxwell never stopped thinking about electricity and magnetism, and the potential link between the two forces, ever searching for a unifying theory to unite the two forces.

At first, Maxwell conceived of a mechanical model of the "ether" through which electric and magnetic forces propagated; this model provided the conceptual stepping stone upon which his unified electromagnetic field theory sprung: empty space was occupied by spinning magnetic "cells", in between which electric charges flowed and spun when electric currents flowed or magnets moved in the vicinity of or through. After a decade or so of further sub-conscious dwelling on the subject, peppered with brief periods of deep focus and conceptual-stepping-stone construction, Maxwell discovered (or, formulated) a mathematical model that precisely quantified electromagnetic forces in a novel, coherent, and dissenting theory that was a radical departure from the contemporary understanding of such forces. With a stroke of intuition and creativity, Maxwell decided to apply the dynamical properties of physical space (introduced by Newton and other contemporaries) to a supposed "electromagnetic field", he succeeded in formalizing the duality of electricity and magnetism, and purported the existence of electro-magnetic waves, propagating through such a field. In his four part paper "On Physical Lines of Force", followed a decade later by the revolutionary and seminal "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism", Maxwell laid the groundwork for all of modern electro-dynamics, opened the proverbial door for the theory of quantum mechanics, and almost single-handedly sparked the latter half of the Industrial Revolution.

Unfortunately for the humanity, Maxwell died in 1871 at the early age of 42, from the same type of gastro-intestinal cancer that his mother perished from when she was the same age, when Maxwell was 8 years old. One can only imagine what else he may have accomplished, what humanity might have further reaped in those years instead of in the following decades, had he lived even just a few years longer.

Perhaps an unexpected third character in this narrative was Oliver Heaviside, who took Maxwell's formalization of the electromagnetic field (10-20 equations represented with quaternions and vector calculus) and distilled it down to the famous 4 "Maxwell's Equations" that are taught in introductory electromagnetism courses today and ever since. Without any higher schooling, after mastering the art of professional Telegraphy, Heaviside undertook the task of absorbing most all of the unified theory of electromagnetism presented by Maxwell in his Treatise. Ultimately joining an informal group of scientists that called themselves the Maxwellians (of which one member was the famous Heinrich Hertz, the discoverer of short-range radio waves), Heaviside worked alongside other ingenious minds to distill, understand, refine, and propagate Maxwell's correct interpretation of electrodynamics, bringing the theory to the masses and ushering in a new era of human communication "without wires" via the revolutionary discovery and harnessing of electromagnetic waves as a means of information transmission. I will never forget: "Wires do not actually carry any form of energy from one location to another, they instead act as a physical guide for an electromagnetic wave traveling along the wire; The traveling wave incites both electric and magnetic forces that propel charges along the length of the wire" (my words). If that doesn't make much sense, but sounds intriguing, I implore you to read the book!

Within these pages, the stories of two of the most impactful and influential contributors to the field of physics are told; Many of us have heard of such names as Newton and Einstein (if not only vaguely understanding their role), but should necessarily incorporate the names "Faraday" and "Maxwell" into our repertoire and timeline of the progression of human knowledge and quest to understand the workings of the universe.

If you, like myself, have ever found yourself wondering: "Wait, what exactly _is_ electricity, and how do magnets work... and, hey, aren't they somehow related?!", and feeling frustrated that you lack the intuition or even adequate conception of such forces even though you spent several semesters "studying" the subject in high-school or at University, I'd strongly recommend that you read this book. Such a well-told story about the magnificent men that connected humanity's knowledge to such fundamental realities of the universe deserves to be read, probably twice. Additionally, I would recommend either reading this book in tandem with someone who is your intellectual equal or superior, or at the very least find a conversation partner with whom you can regularly talk about the dense, not-quite-eloquently-put explanations of both Faraday and Maxwell's experimental and theoretical findings and mathematical formalizations. To be able to discuss such ideas with someone cognizant enough to follow, inquire, and aid in the interpretation and understanding of such abstract, creative, and complex models and conceptions of reality is invaluable. ...more

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Sep 22, 2017 Howard Liu rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Aside from his obvious intelligence, what profoundly impressed me was Faraday's intellectual curiosity. Driven by an insatiable thirst for knowledge and discovery, Faraday, a blacksmith's son who grew up binding books in a bookshop, became the greatest scientist in his time. He retained his wonder for the natural world throughout his life, constantly questioning and experimenting and developing theories, most notably that of electromagnetic lines of forces which completely abolished the prevaili Aside from his obvious intelligence, what profoundly impressed me was Faraday's intellectual curiosity. Driven by an insatiable thirst for knowledge and discovery, Faraday, a blacksmith's son who grew up binding books in a bookshop, became the greatest scientist in his time. He retained his wonder for the natural world throughout his life, constantly questioning and experimenting and developing theories, most notably that of electromagnetic lines of forces which completely abolished the prevailing perception of science. While his experimental discoveries shook the world, his theories on how they worked were largely ignored in part due to his lack of mathematical background- he could not condense his abstract ideas into formulas that govern how things work.

Then came James Maxwell, a true genius of his time who dabbled and made great impacts in many fields. I was particularly intrigued by the way his mind applies knowledge. He was widely read, and had an astute ability to draw on analogies in order to understand things. According to Maxwell himself, "although pairs of things may differ widely from each other, the relation in the one pair may be the same as that in the other... the relation is the most important thing to know, a knowledge of one thing leads us a long way towards knowledge of the other". He also believed in the power of the subconscious mind, often laying a particular area of research dormant in his mind for a few months before coming back to explore it in an entirely different approach. In this way, he was able to make discoveries and provide explanations using highly unconventional methods, and eventually consolidated Faraday's electric and magnetic lines of forces into a unified electromagnetic field theory. An expert mathematician in his own right, he conjured formulas that could accurately describe this phenomenon, which is the divergence, curl and gradient of a field. In an interesting note though, his propensity for dispensing metaphors made him largely a confusing lecturer, and his unwillingness to simplify his highly complicated math (so that it could be further expanded for future discoveries) made his theories very inaccessible to other men of his time, and he died before they became the universal truth that it was now.

All in all, this book gave many inspiring insights about two scientific giants, especially the way they gain knowledge and apply it. A few important traits are curiosity, intellectual courage, and rigorous scrutinizing of their own work. Remarkably, even as busy as they were, both of them were great givers to the community, believing in education via the honing of an analytical and philosophical mind, and participating in various national projects to improve the infrastructure of the community. ...more

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Jan 17, 2017 Ryan Curry rated it it was amazing

Shelves: physics, biographies, history-of-science

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I can comfortably say this is one of the best History of Science / Science Biography books I have read. Forbes and Mahon give an engaging and concise history of the electromagnetic field. In the process giving us a detailed look in the the lives of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.

Somewhere in this book it is quoted that physicists everywhere still look to Clerk Maxwell as an inspiration and a role model. I would be surprised if any physics minded person c ...more

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Oct 24, 2014 Brent Neal rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science

An engaging and involved biography of two of the most influential physicists of the modern age. One a seat-of-his-pants experimentalist, the other a careful mathematical prodigy, together they laid the foundation for all of modern physics. I especially appreciated that the book did not end with Maxwell's death, but rather continued the thread of how his ideas about electromagnetism were curated and expanded upon by others, leading ultimately to the Nobel-prizewinning work on the photoelectric ef ...more

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Jul 31, 2020 Shubhi rated it it was amazing

Electromagnetism and field theory is an all pervasive concept, and powers almost every other aspect of our lives, and hence it’s a challenge to our mind to imagine of a time when it was difficult to comprehend these concepts, let alone discover, in the face of the prevalent mechanical view of the world.
Faraday and Maxwell are, among many other great minds, humans who wandered at the edge of knowledge and science that was prevalent in their times. This book is not merely an account of their geniu ...more

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Sep 26, 2020 AJ rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir-and-biography, stem, non-fiction, 2020

I really enjoyed this book. I got my PhD in optics, and have always joked that if I get a tattoo, it'll be of Maxwell's equations, in vector calc form. I appreciated reading about where the theories came from, and what "established" science was overturned to get there. I also liked how detailed the information was about the experiments, at least in the early part of the chapter.

I felt the last third of the book, the people who came after Faraday and Maxwell, to be quite rushed. I would have like ...more

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Jul 19, 2020 Sujai rated it really liked it

Shelves: charliemunger_recos

Among non-fiction , I love memoirs and autobiographies the most. Memoirs and autobiographies of great men are a widow to the times of their lives, their thought process and habits that made them successful.

Good memoirs come with great research on the subject matter that is related to the personality. For eg: I learnt many things about Relativity from his autobiography than many technical books.. I learnt many things about personal computers and the business of iPod and iPhone's from Steve Jobs ...more

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May 21, 2018 Elliot rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, favorites, non-fiction, science

While reading my physics textbook, I read the brief biographical entries of Faraday, and later on, Maxwell, and was immediately compelled to learn more about these two men. Not only did I enjoy learning about electricity and magnetism, but their individual stories seemed fascinating. After a brief search, I found this book and it was perfect; biographical details aplenty, and in-depth explanations of their discoveries.

Enough about me. The authors follow the stories of the mens' lives, starting While reading my physics textbook, I read the brief biographical entries of Faraday, and later on, Maxwell, and was immediately compelled to learn more about these two men. Not only did I enjoy learning about electricity and magnetism, but their individual stories seemed fascinating. After a brief search, I found this book and it was perfect; biographical details aplenty, and in-depth explanations of their discoveries.

Enough about me. The authors follow the stories of the mens' lives, starting with Faraday and then Maxwell. It is inspiring and satisfying to learn about such excellent men who also happened to provide humanity with groundbreaking discoveries! Even if you aren't particularly interested in science, or if you don't have prior knowledge concerning electricity and magnetism, there is plenty to enjoy in this book.

That being said, the science is covered in detail by the authors. It was fascinating to follow the thought processes of these scientists, and by combining the science with the stories of their lives, the reader is able to appreciate Faraday and Maxwell's brilliance and the novelty of their findings. The scientific material is detailed and complex, and even with the terrific efforts of the authors to make it easy for the average person to understand, if you are unfamiliar with these topics beforehand, you may find them hard to grasp. Don't be discouraged; it took years before Maxwell's own discoveries were understand fully by the scientific community.

Which leads me to my final point. The authors include an interesting section that follows the "Maxwellians", the scientists who after Maxwell's death were able to understand his concepts and apply them to practical applications. This epilogue of sorts is important because it shows how important Faraday and Maxwell's contributions to mankind are.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book, both to those wanting to learn more about scientific discoveries, and to those who simply want to learn about two inspiring human beings. ...more

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Aug 22, 2014 Kyle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, biography, science-general

This gives a good history and explanations of the process that led physicists to the idea of fields permeating all space. I especially like that it covers a broad range of time from Faraday to Maxwell and even to Oliver Heaviside (who seems to be often forgotten in electromagnetic physics history). The story is engaging and I enjoyed learning more about Faraday (I had read a Maxwell biography before). The book definitely gives one a better appreciation to the genius and the kindness of Faraday a ...more

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Jan 16, 2016 Jake rated it liked it

Faraday, unlike Edison or Ford, gave us an idea not a product and we should be grateful for that. The methodology, stuck with us to this day and most of his ideas on Electricity and Magnetism are still the basis for much of physics. Sadly for this author, good stories happen to those that can tell them. I was left with disappointment that more of Faraday's life and experiments not part of this story. I was left wanting more and there is much more to this story than what was covered. ...more

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Nov 10, 2019 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, physics, _own, all-time-favorites

The back-to-back lifetimes of these giants in physics gave us much of what we have today. All radio-wave (Electromagnetic waves) need Faraday and Maxwell. Here is another physics book that reads like and adventure novel. Very addicting! It is so cool to see the experiments described that define the beginning of our understanding of electricity and magnetism. These are not high-tech because they are so incredibly early and fundamental.

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Feb 24, 2017 Scott Kirkwood rated it liked it · review of another edition

I found the frequent historical quotes distracting. Sometimes the author repeated themselves. would have preferred a little more math.

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Aug 10, 2017 Pinak Mehta rated it it was amazing

Great admirer of Faraday and Maxwell!! They were truth-seekers and men with extreme generosity.

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Apr 02, 2020 Siddhesh Ayre rated it really liked it

If you like to read History of science then this is a great read.

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Aug 27, 2014 Filip Ligmajer rated it it was amazing

page 61 | location 930-934 | Added on Thursday, 17 July 2014 16:21:50

By Ampère's theory, the magnetic force was simply what you got when you added all the straight-line forces between pairs of current elements mathematically. Faraday saw things differently—to him, the magnetic force that curved around any current-carrying wire was not an indirect, mathematically derived effect of straight-line forces, it was something primal, a circular force in its own right. The idea of a circular force was qu ...more

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Oct 31, 2019 Vikrant rated it really liked it

3.5/5 stars - Most of us don't really remember what Faraday and Maxwell did; we have not much reason to. School textbooks somehow don't really capture the beauty of these geniuses.

Incidentally, the first physics "textbook" ever was written by Maxwell and apparently it was also quite boring and most of it was incomprehensible to most. So that's that. A bit of meta-weirdness.

But once you realise that Einstein considered Maxwell as the turning point in science, who in turn considered Faraday as t ...more

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Jan 22, 2018 Mike Davis rated it liked it

I wanted to learn more about Michael Faraday. For a long time, I've admired his outsider approach to scientific thought, and his overall modesty as a human. Since I am a chemist, I was familiar with his role in electrochemistry, but I was less familiar with his work in electricity and magnetism. His writing was detailed and very prosaic, and the authors of this biography followed suit. As a result, there are long passages describing the science that were difficult to follow, even for those with ...more

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Jun 14, 2017 Leanne rated it it was amazing

I picked up this book in preparation for visiting in a few weeks the James Clerk Maxwell museum in Edinburgh. I'm really looking forward to visiting the museum and taking a walking tour of all the sites in the city associated with the great James Clerk Maxwell. For As the reviewer says below, Newton credited his scientific success as, standing on the shoulders of giants. When Einstein was asked if he had stood on the shoulders of Newton, he said actually it was on Maxwell's shoulders. And Maxwel ...more

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Nov 09, 2017 Mbogo J rated it really liked it

The strength of this book lies in how it put the faces to the ideas and personalized the story of the electromagnetic field. Apart from the main acts of Faraday and Maxwell, we got to know about other lesser known names like Dr. William Gilbert who was among the first people to carry a scientific inquiry into magnetism by building his own model earth to the brash responses of Olivier Heaviside who perfected Maxwell's equations and when accused of not using Quaternions he had a clever reply. He t ...more

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Nov 24, 2018 Mike rated it it was amazing

This book will make you remember the wonderful Michael Faraday and the amazing James Clerk Maxwell! These were two extraordinary gentlemen, both seeking God's laws in nature by careful experimentations and brilliant minds, that will humble the reader.

As a young man, Faraday travelled to France along with his hero, Humphry Davy, who was to receive a science prize... DURING the Napoleonic wars!

There are many images and impressions that stand out, I would have to type a long text to attempt listing ...more

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Mar 25, 2018 Vivek rated it liked it

Nancy Forbes book traces the history of the discovery of the rules of electromagnetism and the lives of the scientists, Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. I picked up this book because it was on a "best science books of the year" kind of list. The author manages to explain difficult concepts without the use of a single equation. In fact, even Maxwell's famous equations with the symbols for curl, divergence and gradient - mysterious even to someone familiar with mathematics - don't make it ...more

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“A characteristic of Maxwell's work, indeed his life, was that he seemed to take everything in his stride—he was never hurried. Somehow, he and Katherine managed to go riding in the park most afternoons and, of course, they went on accumulating data on color vision, asking all new houseguests to have a go. They had installed the latest big color box near the window in an upstairs” — 2 likes

“It is almost impossible to overstate the scale of Faraday and Maxwell's achievement in bringing the concept of the electromagnetic field into human thought.” — 1 likes

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