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Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics
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 centuryTwo 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 - separated in age by forty years - discovered the existence of the electromagnetic field and devised a radically new theory which overturned the strictly mechanical view of the world that had prevailed since Newton's time.The authors, veteran science writers with special expertise in physics and engineering, have created a lively narrative that interweaves rich biographical detail from each man's life with clear explanations of their scientific accomplishments. Faraday was an autodidact, who overcame class prejudice and a lack of mathematical training to become renowned for his acute powers of experimental observation, technological skills, and prodigious scientific imagination. James Clerk Maxwell was highly regarded as one of the most brilliant mathematical physicists of the age. He made an enormous number of advances in his own right. But when he translated Faraday's ideas into mathematical language, thus creating field theory, this unified framework of electricity, magnetism and light became the basis for much of later, 20th-century physics.Faraday's and Maxwell's collaborative efforts gave rise to many of the technological innovations we take for granted today - from electric power generation to television, and much more. Told with panache, warmth, and clarity, this captivating story of their greatest work - in which each played an equal part - and their inspiring lives will bring new appreciation to these giants of science.
330 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 11, 2014
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5574 people want to read
About the author
Nancy Forbes
2 followersNancy Forbes spent the first nineteen years of her life in Montréal, Canada. After moving to Toronto in 1982, she married and had three children. A devastating tragedy, force her to change her path, and embark on a spiritual journey to find herself. The next ten years, she devoted her time educating herself to understand her strange behavior. In 2003, she enrolled in a two-year yoga teaching program. She now teaches in her own studio, Emerging Butterflies, in Brampton Ontario.
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February 18, 2017
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.”
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.”
June 9, 2018
Si me preguntan cuál es mi científico favorito yo no dudo, Michael Faraday. No encontrarás nadie en la historia que consiguió tanto con tan poco, y eso le da doble valor a su propio mérito, que no es poco, el de transformar completamente nuestro mundo. Sin sus aportaciones tu día a día sería completamente diferente.
Maxwell parece de hecho un personaje creado por un guionista para convertirse en el complemento perfecto de Faraday. Allí donde Faraday fallaba, las matemáticas, él se desenvolvía con fluidez y audacia, como su fiel escudero; uno de familia noble, el otro de raíces pobres. Por un lado diferentes pero a la vez, con tanto en común: el talento, la humildad, el trabajo, el espíritu, la búsqueda de la verdad y una intuición mágica. Ambos sin duda fueron adelantados a su tiempo.
En este libro se recorre la vida de estos dos grandes genios de la ciencia. Vidas conectadas a través de la electricidad y el magnetismo y en especial de un concepto vital en física, el campo, imaginado por uno y desarrollado matemáticamente por el otro.
Una biografía científica completa, amena de seguir, intensa, didáctica y que sirve como una magnífica introducción a la vida de dos de los científicos más grandes de la historia.
Maxwell parece de hecho un personaje creado por un guionista para convertirse en el complemento perfecto de Faraday. Allí donde Faraday fallaba, las matemáticas, él se desenvolvía con fluidez y audacia, como su fiel escudero; uno de familia noble, el otro de raíces pobres. Por un lado diferentes pero a la vez, con tanto en común: el talento, la humildad, el trabajo, el espíritu, la búsqueda de la verdad y una intuición mágica. Ambos sin duda fueron adelantados a su tiempo.
En este libro se recorre la vida de estos dos grandes genios de la ciencia. Vidas conectadas a través de la electricidad y el magnetismo y en especial de un concepto vital en física, el campo, imaginado por uno y desarrollado matemáticamente por el otro.
Una biografía científica completa, amena de seguir, intensa, didáctica y que sirve como una magnífica introducción a la vida de dos de los científicos más grandes de la historia.
December 10, 2020
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 sets of equations in the whole book and one of them is E=mc2 so it is not a textbook in any sense.
It is pretty much true that the invention of motors, generators, wireless communications, radio,the theory of relativity and quantum physics would not be possible without this knowledge. I wonder how many years it would have taken other scientists to independently gather the empirical data and conclusions of Faraday or develop the fundamental Maxwell equations from it and then how many more years the other advances would have been delayed. To me that is as good a measure of a scientist's genius as any. As for Newton, Faraday, Maxwell and Einstein it is debatable who was the most ahead of his time.
This was a non-technical read, although if you don't like science it would be a slog. However there are only three sets of equations in the whole book and one of them is E=mc2 so it is not a textbook in any sense.
It is pretty much true that the invention of motors, generators, wireless communications, radio,the theory of relativity and quantum physics would not be possible without this knowledge. I wonder how many years it would have taken other scientists to independently gather the empirical data and conclusions of Faraday or develop the fundamental Maxwell equations from it and then how many more years the other advances would have been delayed. To me that is as good a measure of a scientist's genius as any. As for Newton, Faraday, Maxwell and Einstein it is debatable who was the most ahead of his time.
July 18, 2016
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 my own. Great Read!
The affection and awe that Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon feel for these two giants are now my own. Great Read!
July 7, 2015
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 physics teacher. They were so practical. The conclusion of the book was a bonus, bringing Heavyside into full view, since Maxwell's equations as we see them on T-Shirts are from Oliver Heavyside's work. The addition of Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Feynman, and others that stood on the shoulders of Maxwell really rounded out the book. I had borrowed it from my local library, but I must by a personal copy of this book.
January 28, 2019
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!
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!
July 21, 2025
Una biografía doble de los dos padres del electromagnetismo, Michael Faraday y James Clerk Maxwell. Los autores no se meten en muchas fórmulas (aunque alguna hay, explicada más o menos) y explican la vida de estos dos genios. En este sentido han hecho un esfuerzo didáctico encomiable para explicar una teoría que no es obvia ni visible. Por el libro pasean también otros ilustres físicos y matemáticos, desde Hans Christian Oersted, Alessandro Volta, William Thompson (Lord Kelvin), Lagrange, Gauss, Marconi, Planck, Einstein, Feymann... Cada vez que leo sobre estas vidas de genios pienso que la ciencia, como el arte o la música, no avanzan de forma continua, sino que de vez en cuando aparecen en el planeta algunos seres humanos que hacen avanzar la ciencia 100 años. También compruebo la importancia de los tutores en la vida de estas mentes, gente que alienta el talento para impulsar el aprendizaje. Estudié las ecuaciones de Maxwell en la carrera (formuladas de manera algo diferente), y la verdad es que este libro me hubiera venido muy bien para entender toda la teoría de campos y ondas.
Faraday (1791-1867) era un autodidacta total, sin formación matemática, pero con una enorme curiosidad, un enfoque experimental pura y una libertad e imaginación fabulosas para idear intuciones sobre cómo funciona la electricidad y los campos magnéticos. De una familia pobre, trabajó como encuadernador de libros, lo que le permitió aprender al leer muchos libros científicos de la época. Consiguó el puesto de asistente de Humprhy Davy, un químico ilustre que lideraba la Royal Institute, donde fue desarrollando toda su carrera cientóifica. Faraday descubrió la inducción electromagnética, que es la base de los motores eléctricos, y describió cómo los cuerpos magnéticos formaban líneas de fuerza y campo, barriendo el concepto Newtoniano de acción a distancia. también trabajó y formuló el funcionamiento de la electroquímica, describiendo la electrolisis y proponiendo las palabras que la describen aún hoy (por ejemplo líneas de fuerza, catión, anión, ión, electrolito, campo magnético...). Muy espectacular fue su demostración de la jaula de Faraday.
Maxwell (1931-1879), escocés, físico, matemático, filósofo natural como se llamaban antes, tuvo una formación académica sólida en Cambridge, y después de demostrar cómo cualquier color se forma a partir de tres colores básicos, leyó el libro de Faraday con todos sus experimientos y se propuso y consiguó formularlas en un marco matemático coherente. Maxwell comparó el movimiento de un campo eléctrico con el de los fluidos, y adaptó las matemáticas de la mecánica de fluidos para formular las ecuaciones de forma simple. Posteriormente adaptó las ecuaciones de Lagrange para formular nuevas ecuaciones que describían a los campos electromagnéticos. Es curioso como abrió la puerta a una física dominada por las matemáticas, donde las cosas no se ven pero funcionan. Maxwell también despreció la teoría del eter como ente que transmite ondas. Demostró que la la luz es una onda electromagmética, que sirvieron para que Einstein después desarrollara toda la teoría de la relatividad.
Einstein siempre dijo que construyó su teoría a hombros de gigantes. Cuando le dijeron si se refería a Newton, él contestó... "no exactamente, yo camino a hombros de Maxwell". Y Maxwell puede decirse que vivió a hombros de Faraday.
Faraday (1791-1867) era un autodidacta total, sin formación matemática, pero con una enorme curiosidad, un enfoque experimental pura y una libertad e imaginación fabulosas para idear intuciones sobre cómo funciona la electricidad y los campos magnéticos. De una familia pobre, trabajó como encuadernador de libros, lo que le permitió aprender al leer muchos libros científicos de la época. Consiguó el puesto de asistente de Humprhy Davy, un químico ilustre que lideraba la Royal Institute, donde fue desarrollando toda su carrera cientóifica. Faraday descubrió la inducción electromagnética, que es la base de los motores eléctricos, y describió cómo los cuerpos magnéticos formaban líneas de fuerza y campo, barriendo el concepto Newtoniano de acción a distancia. también trabajó y formuló el funcionamiento de la electroquímica, describiendo la electrolisis y proponiendo las palabras que la describen aún hoy (por ejemplo líneas de fuerza, catión, anión, ión, electrolito, campo magnético...). Muy espectacular fue su demostración de la jaula de Faraday.
Maxwell (1931-1879), escocés, físico, matemático, filósofo natural como se llamaban antes, tuvo una formación académica sólida en Cambridge, y después de demostrar cómo cualquier color se forma a partir de tres colores básicos, leyó el libro de Faraday con todos sus experimientos y se propuso y consiguó formularlas en un marco matemático coherente. Maxwell comparó el movimiento de un campo eléctrico con el de los fluidos, y adaptó las matemáticas de la mecánica de fluidos para formular las ecuaciones de forma simple. Posteriormente adaptó las ecuaciones de Lagrange para formular nuevas ecuaciones que describían a los campos electromagnéticos. Es curioso como abrió la puerta a una física dominada por las matemáticas, donde las cosas no se ven pero funcionan. Maxwell también despreció la teoría del eter como ente que transmite ondas. Demostró que la la luz es una onda electromagmética, que sirvieron para que Einstein después desarrollara toda la teoría de la relatividad.
Einstein siempre dijo que construyó su teoría a hombros de gigantes. Cuando le dijeron si se refería a Newton, él contestó... "no exactamente, yo camino a hombros de Maxwell". Y Maxwell puede decirse que vivió a hombros de Faraday.
October 2, 2016
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 interesting 330-page book includes seventeen chapters, notes, a formal bibliography and an index.
Positives:
1. Professionally written science biographies blended into one accessible narrative.
2. The fascinating topic of the scientists behind the electromagnetic field.
3. The authors have great mastery of the topic but most importantly were able create an interesting narrative without resorting to the complex mathematics involved in physics and in particular, electromagnetism.
4. Good use of diagrams to complement the excellent narrative.
5. An excellent introduction that teases the public of what’s to come. “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. It united electricity, magnetism, and light into a single, compact theory; changed our way of life by bringing us radio, television, radar, satellite navigation, and mobile phones; inspired Einstein's special theory of relativity; and introduced the idea of field equations, which became the standard form used by today's physicists to model what goes on in the vastness of space and inside atoms.”
6. In essence this book is the story of the electromagnetic field that is brought to you by blending the biographies of Faraday and Maxwell in chronological order.
7. Throughout the book, the authors methodically and chronologically go through the lives of the scientists involved as new discoveries lead to scientific knowledge.
8. A look at the history of electricity and magnetism. “Before 1800, all man-made electricity was static. The discovery of continuous currents came as a complete surprise and was in the best tradition of scientific serendipity.”
9. The fascinating life of Michael Faraday, his strengths and weaknesses as a scientist. “We shall never know what Faraday would have achieved had he mastered mathematics, but, paradoxically, his ignorance may have been an advantage. It led him to derive his theories entirely from experimental observation rather than to deduce them from mathematical models.”
10. Some of the world’s greatest inventions are highlighted in this book. “This time, the magnet revolved around the wire! Faraday had become a discoverer: he had made the world's first electric motor.”
11. This book is intended for the laypersons but it doesn’t cheat those us in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) fields. The concepts are well described and satisfying. “The “quantity of electricity thrown into a current” was “directly as the amount of curves intersected.” This statement was true whether the curves were dense or sparse, converging or diverging, and neither the shape of the wire nor its mode of motion made any difference, except that the direction of the current depended on what became known as the right-hand rule. It was the original statement of one of the most fundamental laws of electromagnetism—now called simply Faraday's law of induction.”
12. The genius of James Clerk Maxwell and how he was able to describe such esoteric concepts particularly for those times. “Maxwell's imaginary fluid was weightless, friction-free, and incompressible. This last property was the key to the analogy. It meant that the fluid had its own built-in inverse-square law: the speed of a particle of fluid flowing directly outward from a point source was inversely proportional to the square of its distance from the source.”
13. Fascinating look at how Maxwell fed from Faraday’s own genius to take these concepts to a better understanding. “As Faraday had found, these substances varied in their ability to conduct electric lines of force—each had its own specific inductive capacity. For example, glass conducted electric lines of force more readily than wood. In his model, Maxwell accommodated this property simply by endowing each substance with the appropriate amount of resistance to fluid flow—the lower the resistance, the smaller the pressure gradient necessary to produce a given speed of flow.”
14. The authors capture the essence of these great scientists and help readers gain a better understanding of who they were. “Though surpassed by his later writings, Maxwell's “On Faraday's Lines of Force”10 is, surely, one of the finest examples of creative thought in the history of science. In his book James Clerk Maxwell: Physicist and Natural Philosopher, Francis Everitt shrewdly characterizes Faraday as a cumulative thinker, Thomson as an inspirational thinker, and Maxwell as an architectural thinker. Maxwell had not only found a way to express Faraday's ideas in mathematical language but also built a foundation for still-greater work yet to come.”
15. Goes over Maxwell’s manifesto, which was to produce a theory that explained all the known experimental laws of electricity and magnetism by deduction from general principles.
16. Key concepts explained and differentiated, “Maxwell distinguished between two kinds of energy held by the field: electric energy was potential energy, like that in a coiled spring; and magnetic energy was kinetic, or “actual” energy, like that in a flywheel.” “Maxwell had achieved the seemingly impossible—he had derived the theory of the electromagnetic field directly from the laws of dynamics.”
17. A look at the Maxwellians. “He straightaway wrote to Lodge to ask for a full text of his talk and soon found that he had another admirer, Lodge's friend George Francis Fitzgerald, who was professor of natural and experimental philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. Like Heaviside, Lodge and Fitzgerald had been captivated by Maxwell's work and both had been trying, first in isolation and then with mutual support, to carry it on. Now Heaviside, the independent recluse, had gained true friendship on his own terms, and the three of them, united in a common cause, became firm friends and formed the core of the group that came to be called the Maxwellians.”
18. Einstein’s admiration for Maxwell. “As Einstein put it: 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.”
19. Provides a timeline and a photo insert.
20. Notes and an invaluable formal bibliography.
Negatives:
1. The supplementary material that is included is good but limited. I would have included a list of all the scientists listed in this book and their discoveries. A helpful timeline is included but an additional supplements add value to the book.
2. Even at it’s most accessible, if you don’t have much interest in science, this book will be difficult to get through. Not really a negative of the book just a reality check for onlookers.
In summary, this is an excellent book that the layperson will enjoy and those in the field will cherish. The authors did a wonderful job of focusing on the grand work of these curious, driven scientists without obfuscating the narrative with esoteric equations. What a wonderful way to learn about the lives of two of the most significant scientists of the 19th century and their grand contributions to our lives today. I highly recommend it!
Further recommendations: “The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell” by Basil Mahon, “The Electric Life of Michael Faraday” by Alan Hirshfeld, “Isaac Newton” by James Gleick, “Planck” by Brandon R. Brown, “QED” by Richard Feynman, “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” by Carlo Rovelli, “Tesla” by W. Bernard Carlson, “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson, and “Gravity” and “The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein” by George Gamow.
“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 interesting 330-page book includes seventeen chapters, notes, a formal bibliography and an index.
Positives:
1. Professionally written science biographies blended into one accessible narrative.
2. The fascinating topic of the scientists behind the electromagnetic field.
3. The authors have great mastery of the topic but most importantly were able create an interesting narrative without resorting to the complex mathematics involved in physics and in particular, electromagnetism.
4. Good use of diagrams to complement the excellent narrative.
5. An excellent introduction that teases the public of what’s to come. “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. It united electricity, magnetism, and light into a single, compact theory; changed our way of life by bringing us radio, television, radar, satellite navigation, and mobile phones; inspired Einstein's special theory of relativity; and introduced the idea of field equations, which became the standard form used by today's physicists to model what goes on in the vastness of space and inside atoms.”
6. In essence this book is the story of the electromagnetic field that is brought to you by blending the biographies of Faraday and Maxwell in chronological order.
7. Throughout the book, the authors methodically and chronologically go through the lives of the scientists involved as new discoveries lead to scientific knowledge.
8. A look at the history of electricity and magnetism. “Before 1800, all man-made electricity was static. The discovery of continuous currents came as a complete surprise and was in the best tradition of scientific serendipity.”
9. The fascinating life of Michael Faraday, his strengths and weaknesses as a scientist. “We shall never know what Faraday would have achieved had he mastered mathematics, but, paradoxically, his ignorance may have been an advantage. It led him to derive his theories entirely from experimental observation rather than to deduce them from mathematical models.”
10. Some of the world’s greatest inventions are highlighted in this book. “This time, the magnet revolved around the wire! Faraday had become a discoverer: he had made the world's first electric motor.”
11. This book is intended for the laypersons but it doesn’t cheat those us in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) fields. The concepts are well described and satisfying. “The “quantity of electricity thrown into a current” was “directly as the amount of curves intersected.” This statement was true whether the curves were dense or sparse, converging or diverging, and neither the shape of the wire nor its mode of motion made any difference, except that the direction of the current depended on what became known as the right-hand rule. It was the original statement of one of the most fundamental laws of electromagnetism—now called simply Faraday's law of induction.”
12. The genius of James Clerk Maxwell and how he was able to describe such esoteric concepts particularly for those times. “Maxwell's imaginary fluid was weightless, friction-free, and incompressible. This last property was the key to the analogy. It meant that the fluid had its own built-in inverse-square law: the speed of a particle of fluid flowing directly outward from a point source was inversely proportional to the square of its distance from the source.”
13. Fascinating look at how Maxwell fed from Faraday’s own genius to take these concepts to a better understanding. “As Faraday had found, these substances varied in their ability to conduct electric lines of force—each had its own specific inductive capacity. For example, glass conducted electric lines of force more readily than wood. In his model, Maxwell accommodated this property simply by endowing each substance with the appropriate amount of resistance to fluid flow—the lower the resistance, the smaller the pressure gradient necessary to produce a given speed of flow.”
14. The authors capture the essence of these great scientists and help readers gain a better understanding of who they were. “Though surpassed by his later writings, Maxwell's “On Faraday's Lines of Force”10 is, surely, one of the finest examples of creative thought in the history of science. In his book James Clerk Maxwell: Physicist and Natural Philosopher, Francis Everitt shrewdly characterizes Faraday as a cumulative thinker, Thomson as an inspirational thinker, and Maxwell as an architectural thinker. Maxwell had not only found a way to express Faraday's ideas in mathematical language but also built a foundation for still-greater work yet to come.”
15. Goes over Maxwell’s manifesto, which was to produce a theory that explained all the known experimental laws of electricity and magnetism by deduction from general principles.
16. Key concepts explained and differentiated, “Maxwell distinguished between two kinds of energy held by the field: electric energy was potential energy, like that in a coiled spring; and magnetic energy was kinetic, or “actual” energy, like that in a flywheel.” “Maxwell had achieved the seemingly impossible—he had derived the theory of the electromagnetic field directly from the laws of dynamics.”
17. A look at the Maxwellians. “He straightaway wrote to Lodge to ask for a full text of his talk and soon found that he had another admirer, Lodge's friend George Francis Fitzgerald, who was professor of natural and experimental philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. Like Heaviside, Lodge and Fitzgerald had been captivated by Maxwell's work and both had been trying, first in isolation and then with mutual support, to carry it on. Now Heaviside, the independent recluse, had gained true friendship on his own terms, and the three of them, united in a common cause, became firm friends and formed the core of the group that came to be called the Maxwellians.”
18. Einstein’s admiration for Maxwell. “As Einstein put it: 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.”
19. Provides a timeline and a photo insert.
20. Notes and an invaluable formal bibliography.
Negatives:
1. The supplementary material that is included is good but limited. I would have included a list of all the scientists listed in this book and their discoveries. A helpful timeline is included but an additional supplements add value to the book.
2. Even at it’s most accessible, if you don’t have much interest in science, this book will be difficult to get through. Not really a negative of the book just a reality check for onlookers.
In summary, this is an excellent book that the layperson will enjoy and those in the field will cherish. The authors did a wonderful job of focusing on the grand work of these curious, driven scientists without obfuscating the narrative with esoteric equations. What a wonderful way to learn about the lives of two of the most significant scientists of the 19th century and their grand contributions to our lives today. I highly recommend it!
Further recommendations: “The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell” by Basil Mahon, “The Electric Life of Michael Faraday” by Alan Hirshfeld, “Isaac Newton” by James Gleick, “Planck” by Brandon R. Brown, “QED” by Richard Feynman, “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” by Carlo Rovelli, “Tesla” by W. Bernard Carlson, “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson, and “Gravity” and “The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein” by George Gamow.
May 16, 2017
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.
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.
June 20, 2016
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.
Also, I learn more on 3 hours about the fundamentals of electromagnetism than from 2 semesters in college.
Good read all around.
November 15, 2021
One sentence takeaway: Maxwell is the 19th century Newton.
I used to roll my eyes when lectures started with the history of the scientist who was credited with the days lesson. However, I am now understanding the necessity to learn how the theory grew and evolved in order to grasp concepts at the edge of societal knowledge.
I used to roll my eyes when lectures started with the history of the scientist who was credited with the days lesson. However, I am now understanding the necessity to learn how the theory grew and evolved in order to grasp concepts at the edge of societal knowledge.
December 27, 2019
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.
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.
November 3, 2022
An excellent very well-written book. I can't imagine how it could have been improved. Shelved as an easy favorite. The writing is not technical but instead conversational, and no one need worry about lack of a math or physics background.
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) and Michael Faraday (1791-1867) were surely the two greatest scientists of the 19th century. Unlike a few scientists we read about, who might be resentful of intruders upon their own turf, these two modest and brilliant men showed great generosity of spirit between themselves and anyone else who shared their interest in using his time on Earth "...to serve his own generation ... and then fall asleep" as Maxwell said during his final illness.
A generation older than Maxwell, Faraday, an expert and untiring experimentalist who never learned math but had the abounding imagination to visualize in three dimensions what he learned by experimenting with electricity, magnetism, and light, laid the experimental basis for Maxwell's mathematical formulations of electromagnetism, a leap in physics so far ahead of his time that it was decades before physicists recognized its full import. Previous to these two there was little knowledge or interest in the field; it dealt with things invisible, hard to conceive, characterize, and test, and of little or no use at the time.
Maxwell first recognized that the ratio of electrostatic charge to electromagnetic charge is a special constant: the velocity of light (the other units cancel). He looked up those charge values determined earlier by experiments of Wilhelm Weber, and the ratio was within one percent of that velocity as had been estimated with other methods. This was the first evidence that light itself was an electromagnetic phenomenon.
His electromagnetic equations also were the first example of an accurate mathematical model which had no mechanical analog. While this fact initially caused derision from some, including the great William Thomson, who at first suspected that Maxwell had fallen into mysticism, their value ultimately was universally acknowledged and remain the standard equations of electromagnetics.
Remarkably, Maxwell also made valuable contributions to allied fields such as thermodynamics and color vision. He was fascinated by color and is said to have made the first color photograph. He photographed three black and white images of a colorful tartan cloth using red, green, and blue filters. He projected the three images through the matching three filters. Merging the three projections, he astonished observers with an accurate color image of the cloth.
Early in his career Maxwell won a prize for his proof that the rings of Saturn are composed of many separate bodies rather than being liquid or solid. By determination as well as mathematical skill, he showed that solid rings would break up, and the same would happen to liquid ones due to tidal forces. The problem proved so difficult that his was the only entry; no one else had been able to get near a solution. The British Astronomer Royal described Maxwell's essay as "one of the most remarkable applications of mathematics to physics that I have ever seen."
That Maxwell's equations lacked mechanical analogs, was duly noted by Albert Einstein: "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."
It did not escape Einstein's notice that Maxwell's derivation of the speed of light did not refer to an observer. Einstein's great insight was then to suppose that not only that speed but also all of the other laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion, the foundation of his Special Theory of Relativity of 1905 which followed mathematically from that supposition.
Great work in statistical mechanics by the Austrian Ludwig Boltzmann and the American Willard Gibbs followed Maxwell's work in that field.
The last two excellent chapters trace the subsequent achievements of physicists following Maxwell's work (by the "Maxwellians") and then the related advancements thereafter from 1890 onward, particularly by Einstein. Newton had modestly admitted that he had stood on the shoulders of giants [such as Galileo] in order to make his discoveries. Einstein when asked whether he had stood on the shoulders of Newton, replied, "[That] ... is not quite right; I stood on Maxwell's shoulders."
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) and Michael Faraday (1791-1867) were surely the two greatest scientists of the 19th century. Unlike a few scientists we read about, who might be resentful of intruders upon their own turf, these two modest and brilliant men showed great generosity of spirit between themselves and anyone else who shared their interest in using his time on Earth "...to serve his own generation ... and then fall asleep" as Maxwell said during his final illness.
A generation older than Maxwell, Faraday, an expert and untiring experimentalist who never learned math but had the abounding imagination to visualize in three dimensions what he learned by experimenting with electricity, magnetism, and light, laid the experimental basis for Maxwell's mathematical formulations of electromagnetism, a leap in physics so far ahead of his time that it was decades before physicists recognized its full import. Previous to these two there was little knowledge or interest in the field; it dealt with things invisible, hard to conceive, characterize, and test, and of little or no use at the time.
Maxwell first recognized that the ratio of electrostatic charge to electromagnetic charge is a special constant: the velocity of light (the other units cancel). He looked up those charge values determined earlier by experiments of Wilhelm Weber, and the ratio was within one percent of that velocity as had been estimated with other methods. This was the first evidence that light itself was an electromagnetic phenomenon.
His electromagnetic equations also were the first example of an accurate mathematical model which had no mechanical analog. While this fact initially caused derision from some, including the great William Thomson, who at first suspected that Maxwell had fallen into mysticism, their value ultimately was universally acknowledged and remain the standard equations of electromagnetics.
Remarkably, Maxwell also made valuable contributions to allied fields such as thermodynamics and color vision. He was fascinated by color and is said to have made the first color photograph. He photographed three black and white images of a colorful tartan cloth using red, green, and blue filters. He projected the three images through the matching three filters. Merging the three projections, he astonished observers with an accurate color image of the cloth.
Early in his career Maxwell won a prize for his proof that the rings of Saturn are composed of many separate bodies rather than being liquid or solid. By determination as well as mathematical skill, he showed that solid rings would break up, and the same would happen to liquid ones due to tidal forces. The problem proved so difficult that his was the only entry; no one else had been able to get near a solution. The British Astronomer Royal described Maxwell's essay as "one of the most remarkable applications of mathematics to physics that I have ever seen."
That Maxwell's equations lacked mechanical analogs, was duly noted by Albert Einstein: "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."
It did not escape Einstein's notice that Maxwell's derivation of the speed of light did not refer to an observer. Einstein's great insight was then to suppose that not only that speed but also all of the other laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion, the foundation of his Special Theory of Relativity of 1905 which followed mathematically from that supposition.
Great work in statistical mechanics by the Austrian Ludwig Boltzmann and the American Willard Gibbs followed Maxwell's work in that field.
The last two excellent chapters trace the subsequent achievements of physicists following Maxwell's work (by the "Maxwellians") and then the related advancements thereafter from 1890 onward, particularly by Einstein. Newton had modestly admitted that he had stood on the shoulders of giants [such as Galileo] in order to make his discoveries. Einstein when asked whether he had stood on the shoulders of Newton, replied, "[That] ... is not quite right; I stood on Maxwell's shoulders."
July 29, 2016
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 Oliver Heaviside; Faraday and Maxwell are presented as near-saints, men of virtually unflagging grace and flawless conduct. That their lives are told so engagingly is a credit to the inherent fascinations of their fields of study, but also to the authors of this book. How much more exciting, then, would Heaviside's cantankerous life story be?
Forbes and Mahon have included enough mathematics to do credit to Maxwell's contributions; Maxwell's equations are legendary in the history of physics and to omit them would have been an injustice. No understanding of calculus is required, and the vector concepts of "divergence", "curl", and "gradient" are carefully explained in a qualitative, accessible way. Even then, they come only near the end of the book, climactic discoveries that they were.
The end notes frequently contain interesting supplementary information, and in the chapter where Maxwell's equations come into flower, the authors present there (briefly) additional mathematical and concepts from physical theory.
In my view, this book is outstanding, model writing in the history of physics for the lay reader--and a far, far better effort than Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air on Joseph Priestley, whose story had the advantage of offering much more drama and excitement, and yet was handled clumsily and indifferently.
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 Oliver Heaviside; Faraday and Maxwell are presented as near-saints, men of virtually unflagging grace and flawless conduct. That their lives are told so engagingly is a credit to the inherent fascinations of their fields of study, but also to the authors of this book. How much more exciting, then, would Heaviside's cantankerous life story be?
Forbes and Mahon have included enough mathematics to do credit to Maxwell's contributions; Maxwell's equations are legendary in the history of physics and to omit them would have been an injustice. No understanding of calculus is required, and the vector concepts of "divergence", "curl", and "gradient" are carefully explained in a qualitative, accessible way. Even then, they come only near the end of the book, climactic discoveries that they were.
The end notes frequently contain interesting supplementary information, and in the chapter where Maxwell's equations come into flower, the authors present there (briefly) additional mathematical and concepts from physical theory.
In my view, this book is outstanding, model writing in the history of physics for the lay reader--and a far, far better effort than Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air on Joseph Priestley, whose story had the advantage of offering much more drama and excitement, and yet was handled clumsily and indifferently.
July 6, 2025
Idk if “cozy science” is a genre yet but this seems pretty close. This gave me more appreciation for some of the concepts I took for granted in emags
September 22, 2017
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.
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.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 17, 2021
A wonderful dual biography of two of the discoverers of the existence of the electromagnetic field. Both men lived fascinating lives, and I was happy to have a book that helped me understand them better as products of their time. I was particularly interested in Faraday who made massive discoveries in physics while simultaneously being inept in Mathematics. It was interesting to me how he both held the respect and annoyance of the scientific community despite, and due to this deficiency respectively. In the epistemic structure of modern physics, it is necessary that one evince their ideas using two symbolic languages: Natural and Mathematical. The former is often seen as a much more imprecise version of the latter, as it fails to describe with precision the physical phenomenon. Therefore, as some may imagine, Natural language is not useful in describing the world as the "universe speaks in the language of mathematics". While in no regard am I doubting this, as the correspondence of some mathematical and physical structures are clearly very substantially, correspondent, or to paraphrase Wigner, Math is unreasonably effective. Nonetheless one should have pause that the likes of a person such as faraday could make such massive discoveries despite not being mathematically literate. Is it perhaps the case that he was some strange freak of nature or can it be the case that descriptive, qualitative etches of our universe are simply underrated in their utility by some of our sciences. Food for thought.
Either way, this was a great book of science history recommended for anyone curious about the development of modern physics.
Either way, this was a great book of science history recommended for anyone curious about the development of modern physics.
August 22, 2014
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 and Maxwell!
October 24, 2014
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 effect by Einstein.
July 31, 2020
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 genius, but also of their passion, labour, and determination, and of course their courage.
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 genius, but also of their passion, labour, and determination, and of course their courage.
February 5, 2016
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.
October 31, 2018
If you, like me, have little background in physics, this book is a great place to begin. The dual biography helped me more than a biography of either. The authors were clear, without being condescending. The diagrams were very helpful. While I can't say that I fully understand all the science discussed, I do have a fuller appreciation of the revolutionary impact of the work of these two men.
April 6, 2021
Brilliant account of how Faraday and Maxwell went against all conventions and bridged the gap between Newton's mechanical universe and Einstein's relativity, thereby enabling the world in which we live today.
May 5, 2023
Mid-1980s in Brazil was a bit like like late 1970s in the United States. There wasn't much difference between a computer enthusiast and an electronics hobbyist. Most of us heard about computers in electronics magazines we already read; some even bought their first computers as do-it-yourself kits from these magazines.
So, before I had my first computer, I already knew a bit about electronics: trivial stuff, like how to make an electromagnet with copper wire around an iron nail, a transformer with two coils with a different number of turns, a compass with a cork and a magnetized needle, and even simple electric motors. I have fond memories of "Eletrônica Jr.", an electronics magazine for young kids. Then I've got my first computer and I left the low-level electronics phenomena behind; they were no longer interesting.
In Elementary School I was always bored, because I thought "I already knew all that stuff". But in High School things changed a bit: I learned that most of that experiments were performed by Michael Faraday, "a genius who didn't know advanced math". The Physics teacher told us to memorize all the formulas for the electromagnetic phenomena I already knew, and I always wanted more... From where those formulas came? If Faraday "didn't know Math", who did the hard part?
Then in College I started learning with Calculus and Differential Equations, and suspected that this was the way to solve the mystery (just like they explained Mechanics). When I studied basic (because my major was in Computer Science, I only studied the Real part, not the Complex one) Electromagnetism in College everything beautifully in place. James Clerk Maxwell was the responsible for that "formalization". Seeing how to all those formulae from High School, and all those phenomena from childhood, were explained by Maxwell's "simple" set of equations (which are only simple if you have a good grasp of Calculus, Differential Equations and Vector Algebra) was an epiphany.
And then I came to this book. Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics is a beautiful homage to these two giants. It also shows that saying that "Faraday was a simple man with a good hand for experiments he couldn't formally explain" and "Maxwell simply formalized Faraday's results using a mathematical model" are gross oversimplifications (to not say lies). And it's in showing this that the book shines. The occasional appearances of other great researchers of the time (like Humphry Davy - a genius with many discoveries and contributions but that entered History as the scientist who "discovered Faraday", and the French André-Marie Ampère, inventor of the solenoid and the electrical telegraph), and the contributions of, for example, Faraday's wife Sarah Barnard (who helped with many of his husband's experiments), make this book even more interesting.
I have one question that I am unable to answer: did I like this book so much because I already know the importance of Faraday and Maxwell, and understand (reasonably well) their work? Or would my 12 year old version, tinkering with batteries, lamps and electromagnets be even more fascinated if I had read it back then?
So, before I had my first computer, I already knew a bit about electronics: trivial stuff, like how to make an electromagnet with copper wire around an iron nail, a transformer with two coils with a different number of turns, a compass with a cork and a magnetized needle, and even simple electric motors. I have fond memories of "Eletrônica Jr.", an electronics magazine for young kids. Then I've got my first computer and I left the low-level electronics phenomena behind; they were no longer interesting.
In Elementary School I was always bored, because I thought "I already knew all that stuff". But in High School things changed a bit: I learned that most of that experiments were performed by Michael Faraday, "a genius who didn't know advanced math". The Physics teacher told us to memorize all the formulas for the electromagnetic phenomena I already knew, and I always wanted more... From where those formulas came? If Faraday "didn't know Math", who did the hard part?
Then in College I started learning with Calculus and Differential Equations, and suspected that this was the way to solve the mystery (just like they explained Mechanics). When I studied basic (because my major was in Computer Science, I only studied the Real part, not the Complex one) Electromagnetism in College everything beautifully in place. James Clerk Maxwell was the responsible for that "formalization". Seeing how to all those formulae from High School, and all those phenomena from childhood, were explained by Maxwell's "simple" set of equations (which are only simple if you have a good grasp of Calculus, Differential Equations and Vector Algebra) was an epiphany.
And then I came to this book. Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics is a beautiful homage to these two giants. It also shows that saying that "Faraday was a simple man with a good hand for experiments he couldn't formally explain" and "Maxwell simply formalized Faraday's results using a mathematical model" are gross oversimplifications (to not say lies). And it's in showing this that the book shines. The occasional appearances of other great researchers of the time (like Humphry Davy - a genius with many discoveries and contributions but that entered History as the scientist who "discovered Faraday", and the French André-Marie Ampère, inventor of the solenoid and the electrical telegraph), and the contributions of, for example, Faraday's wife Sarah Barnard (who helped with many of his husband's experiments), make this book even more interesting.
I have one question that I am unable to answer: did I like this book so much because I already know the importance of Faraday and Maxwell, and understand (reasonably well) their work? Or would my 12 year old version, tinkering with batteries, lamps and electromagnets be even more fascinated if I had read it back then?
June 5, 2021
Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell are two of my heroes and have been so for decades. Not only were they two of the most brilliant scientists ever, and they were also humble men of God. As a result, I am always delighted to read about them. This book provides a mostly excellent survey of their lives and how their research combined to change the world. Unfortunately, the book is written from an implicit anti-God perspective, such that the faith aspects of their lives seemed to have been an inconvenience to the authors and was referred to as little as possible. It could be argued that their faiths were irrelevant to the story that was told in this book, which might even be fair. But if that is the case then I didn’t like the narrow choice of story that was told. From my perspective both Faraday and Maxwell have much to say on how science and faith can and should be combined, especially in the lives of scientists who seek to follow God. This aspect of their lives was largely missing from the book; thus the less than stellar rating.
June 1, 2023
Fun and educational read. I especially enjoyed the life of Michael Faraday. This is presented in an enjoyable manner regardless of the science. I'm sure most will feel this way, as James Maxwell's life was told more abbreviated and with more just reading of his formulas with brief explanations that were sometimes difficult for me to follow. Still, getting to see the bigger picture for how these concepts evolved is amazing. Well worth the read.
May 2, 2021
One of the best scientific biographies I read, maybe even the best. Double biography of Faraday and Maxwell, well written and focused on the most interesting aspects of their lives. Plus a very successful attempt to explain the electromagnetic theory to a non specialist. And also the short history of the impact this theory had on our world. I cannot think of any weakness of this great book.
October 19, 2025
A nice two-in-one scientific biography. Tells the story of one of the most important scientific revolutions of all time (given the applications of electricity) with a focus on two very different characters.
November 2, 2021
Now I’m sufficiently pumped for grad e&m next semester!!! 🔋🧲🥳
March 16, 2022
Read It.
Go.
Go.
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