Maxwell received his first education in Edinburgh. 1847 years old entered the University of Edinburgh to study. He is the youngest student in the class, but his grades are among the best, showing extraordinary talent. He not only studies hard, but also likes reading extracurricular books.
1850, 19-year-old Maxwell left Edinburgh and entered the Department of Mathematics of Trinity College, Cambridge (Newton studied here) after completing four years of college studies in three years.
1854, Maxwell, who just graduated from Cambridge, saw Faraday's experimental research on electricity. After studying this work carefully, he decided to use mathematics to represent Faraday's theory.
Maxwell stayed in school for two years after graduation, and then briefly taught in Scotland. 1860, Maxwell came to King's College London as a professor of natural philosophy and astronomy, where he achieved fruitful results in several years. He not only described Saturn's rings, but also developed the color theory and took the first color photo.
Before Maxwell equations 1820, physics was based on Newton's ideas. 1820, electromagnetic phenomena discovered by Oster puzzled people. In the same year, French scientist Ampere summed up Oster's discovery by mathematical method and founded electrodynamics. 183 1 year, Faraday discovered the law of electromagnetic induction.
From 65438 to 0855, Maxwell began to devote himself to the study of electromagnetism. He firmly believed that Faraday's theory contained the truth, and he decided to express Faraday's genius thought in precise mathematical form with his profound mathematical attainments. He published three papers in succession: On Faraday's magnetic field lines, On the magnetic field lines of physics and Theory of Electromagnetic Field Dynamics, in which Maxwell's equations expressed the electromagnetic field theory in a perfect mathematical form.
Maxwell's equations always have four equations, namely, Gauss electric field law describing static electricity, Gauss magnetic field law describing static magnetism, Faraday law describing magnetic electrification and Ampere-Maxwell law describing electromagnetic electrification.
Why compare with Newton and Einstein?
Although Maxwell's equations have four equations, three and a half of them existed before Maxwell, and only half of the fourth ampere-Maxwell law was added by him.
That's all. Why is he recognized as a person who can be compared with Newton and Einstein?
The reason is that before Maxwell, a large number of experimental laws have been produced in the field of electromagnetism, but it is extremely difficult to establish a perfect model in chaos law to describe the whole electromagnetism.
However, Maxwell, with his talented mathematical ability and physical intuition, directly modified Ampere's Loop Theorem, corrected the contradiction between several laws and discovered electromagnetic waves. His amendment shows that time-varying electric field can produce magnetic field, and time-varying magnetic field can produce electric field.
Maxwell's equation describes everything about classical electromagnetism. In the past, all electromagnetic laws can be derived from Maxwell equations, and unsolved problems can also be found from Maxwell equations. It can also prove the existence of electromagnetic waves.
Maxwell established Maxwell's equations and thus established classical electrodynamics. He also predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves and put forward the electromagnetic theory of light. His equation proves that electromagnetic field has wave propagation characteristics, which is an important discovery in physics. This wave travels at the speed of light. So Maxwell's equations are not only the basic laws of electromagnetism, but also the basic laws of optics.
His Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (1873) is a leading physics masterpiece after Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy before the 20th century.
Newton's classical mechanics paved the way for the mechanical age of mankind, and Maxwell's electromagnetism opened the door to the electrical age for mankind.