The Impact of Maxwell’s Work

COMMUNICATIONS:

In the early nineteenth century, despite many individual advances in knowledge, there was no inkling of a comprehensive theory of electricity and magnetism. In developing this, Maxwell pointed the way to the existence of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Defining fields as a tension in the medium, he stated his belief in a new concept - that energies resides in fields as well as bodies. This pointed the way to the application of electromagnetic radiation for such present-day uses as radio, television, radar, microwaves and thermal imaging.


THERMODYNAMICS:

Maxwell made fundamental contributions to the development of thermodynamics. He was also a founder of the kinetic theory of gases. This theory provided the new subject of statistical physics, linking thermodynamics and mechanics, and is still widely used as a model for rarefied gases and plasmas.
 

RHEOLOGY:

This is concerned with the investigation and interpretation of the flow behaviour of substances. It has many roles, extending to quality control, across industry (including the food industry) and in medicine. It can be traced back directly to Maxwell's pioneering theoretical and experimental work on topics, such as viscosity, which are strongly dependent on the molecular structure of free-flowing substances.
 

ENGINEERING:

Maxwell was the first to show how to calculate stresses in framed arch and suspension bridges. He also led the work of the British Association committee which defined most of the electrical units in use today; in the associated experiments he pioneered the use of feedback control.


MATHEMATICS:

His particular gift was the ability to see phenomena in terms of relationships which could be defined by equations, if necessary abandoning a physical analogy. He invented the term "curl" for the vector operator that appears in his equations for the electromagnetic field.


NUCLEAR ENERGY:

Calculating the speed of electromagnetic waves, Maxwell postulated that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation exerting pressure and carrying momentum. This provided the basis for Einstein's work on relativity from which the relationship between energy, mass and velocity contributed to the theory underlying the development of atomic energy.