History of Maxwell's equations

Common card · No. 447139

By the first half of the 19th century, the understanding of electromagnetics had improved through many experiments and theoretical work. In the 1780s, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb established his law of electrostatics. In 1825, André-Marie Ampère published his force law. In 1831, Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction through his experiments, and proposed lines of forces to describe it. In 1834, Emil Lenz solved the problem of the direction of the induction, and Franz Ernst Neumann wrote down the equation to calculate the induced force by change of magnetic flux. However, these experimental results and rules were not well organized and sometimes confusing to scientists. A comprehensive summary of the electrodynamic principles was needed. This work was done by the Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell through a series of papers published from the 1850s to the 1870s. In the 1850s, Maxwell was working at the University of Cambridge where he was impressed by...

Read on Wikipedia · Image digitized from an engraving by G. J. Stodart from a photograph by Fergus of Greenock, Public domain