The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell certainly deserves to be better known. He is as great as Newton or Copernicus or any other revolutionary scientist. I had no idea how much he did. His work on color theory was foundational. His analysis of the rings of Saturn is still valid and the basis of our current understanding. There's a reason we learn the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution in both statistics and thermodynamics, he was a pioneer in both of those fields and the theory of gases as well. And I haven't even gotten to electromagnetism! He predicted that light was electromagnetic waves, and so calculated the speed of light accurately from theory even before it was measured as accurately experimentally. On top of all that, he seems to have been a first class Christian gentleman, and generous in every possible way.

I didn't know what a poet Maxwell was, although I remember seeing a couple of his poems in math journals. I think he wrote one on knots that is famous. It would be fun to get a book of his complete poems.

I also learned a great deal about other nineteenth century scientists and mathematicians and how they related to each other.

I hate to give this book four stars. After all, I really knew nothing about Maxwell except for his work in electromagnetism and that he was Christian and Scot; so I owe the author a great debt. (Oddly enough, I think I learned he was a Christian in a Kurt Vonnegut book.) What I just couldn't take about this book was that it seemed to be for children. It starts calling Maxwell "James" at the beginning, and the tone seems to be intended to draw a child into the story. It even seemed like a children's book at the beginning, but then sort of became an adult science biography, but continued some of the tone of a children's book. The author continued to call him "James" all the way through the book, even though every other adult was called by the family name or the full name. A few times I had to reread a section carefully because I was confused about who was being described. There was just something about the style that rubbed me the wrong way.

Maxwell didn't do anything of interest outside of physics. His personal life had no hint of scandal. He had no children, a happy marriage, and no outrageous relatives. He was bullied at school, but no more than most of us. He suffered no career hardships, moving from one UK university to another with ease, but also without fanfare.

Unlike Newton, he wasn't an intriguing recluse who ended up in high public office. Unlike Einstein, he never became a media star or leader of world opinion. Unlike Darwin, he avoided great voyages of discovery and arguments with the church. I can't imagine anyone with less "back story". I'm surprised a professional biographer would attempt a life of Maxwell. And, indeed, Mahon isn't a professional biographer. He's an engineer, and also ran the British census. In fact, reading this biography is like reading the census. A lot of names and basic details, but nothing much of interest.

What is interesting, of course, is Maxwell's work in statistical mechanics and electromagnetism. But Mahon contrives to make this boring as well. There is far too long a discussion of Maxwell's early work on the "spinning cell" model of electromagnetism. I bought the book hoping that this might provide more philosophical insight into what "the field" *actually* is. Instead, I soon realised that Maxwell and Mahon aren't much into philosophical insight. At least I gained insight into how the "spinning cell" model had fallen out of fashion and never recovered!

Mahon would have been better providing a longer explanation of the famous Maxwell equations. He quotes them, but provides an inadequate explanation of them. Instead we get stultifyingly long explanations of dead theories and far too many of Maxwell's stultifyingly boring poems. If you really want to understand Maxwell, then get hold of a good physics textbook. Feynman's lectures are recommended (not Feynmann's as Mahon recommends, in an example of the abysmal copy editing in this book.)

The first eleven chapters of this book provide a competent biography of James Clerk Maxwell. The last chapter attempts to give a big-picture assessment of Maxwell's scientific legacy. The biography is very good. The author integrates material from many different sources. The organization is chronological and the prose is simple and direct. There are several pages of interesting photographs, nearly twenty five pages of end notes and a short but adequate bibliography. These features are just what most engineers want and expect from a biography. Maxwell's decency, honesty, modesty and wry sense of humor come shining through the pages. Some of the details of Maxwell's personal life came as a surprise. For example, as a young man Maxwell fell in love with his 14 year old cousin Lizzie. They planned to marry after she turned 16, but their families persuaded them not to because of fears about cosanguinity. At the age of 27 Maxwell married the 34 year old daughter of the Principal of the College where he was teaching. He was happily married for more than twenty years before dying of stomach cancer, a disease for which his family had a strong genetic tendency.

The descriptions of Maxwell's work on color theory and statistical mechanics are adequate. It is obvious that author does not really understand Maxwell's Equations, but very few people do. The main problem is that the author appears to be unaware that Maxwell's theory evolved for approximately 25 years after his death before achieving the form known as 'Maxwell's Equations.' Interesting aspects of this development include 1) the incommensurability of the Continental and British paradigms during the second half of the 19th century, 2) how George Fitzgerald, Oliver Heaviside, Oliver Lodge and other 'Maxwellians' modified Maxwell's formulation in various ways, some of which were counter-productive, 3) how the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 undermined Maxwell's ether-based ontology, 4) how, after electrons were discovered in 1895, charge was grafted into the theory, 5) how the Vogt transformation (now known as the Lorentz transformation) was used by Poincare and Lorentz as a way of compensating for limitations of Maxwell's ether-based ontology, and 6) how Einstein developed the Special Theory of Relativity as a way to obtain the Lorentz transformation from two postulates. If the book had included a brief synopsis of this period I would probably have given it 5 stars. Instead, the last chapter makes unsupported claims that will seem highly exaggerated to people who are familiar with the history of science during the 19th century.

Maxwell was a very fine scientist and a very fine person, but he was not 'the man who changed everything.' I give this book four stars for what it includes and subtract one star for what it neglects, resulting in an overall rating of three stars.

A brief but fairly detailed biography of one of the greatest physicists who ever lived. Most people who know of Maxwell think of his stupendous theoretical work, especially his discovery of the fundamental laws of electromagnetic theory (although the form of the laws we know today were first written out by Oliver Heaviside), but this book also emphasizes Maxwell's excellent work as an experimentalist. His clinical studies of human color vision extended over almost his entire career, and became increasingly sophisticated as time went on.

While working as a physicist Maxwell also functioned as a Scottish Laird, maintaining a large inherited estate, with all the worries that entailed. He was also active in a number of "outreach" activities in an effort to discover or awaken talent in physics among factory workers and other educationally disadvantaged groups.

Interestingly, everyone who knew Maxwell personally was deeply impressed by his warm, kind, open and helpful personality. Maxwell married late, and his wife is something of a mystery. What few reactions to her survive in the records of the day are almost uniformly negative. Yet she seems to have been a willing and effective lab partner in Maxwell's experimental program.

Maxwell's life was tragically short, and it is natural to wonder what he might have achieved had he been granted a few more decades of vigorous research and inquiry. In a way, Maxwell's career is somewhat parallel to that of Italian/American physicist Enrico Fermi, who was also a giant in both experiment and theory, and whose own life was cut off suddenly (also by cancer) when he was still near the peak of his powers.

For those of us hooked on science biographies, Mr. Mahon's take on Maxwell is an engaging work. The author weaves autobiographical detail smoothly into a story of critically important scientific discoveries (field theory, color theory). Like Kepler and Galileo before him, Maxwell saw no contradiction between science and faith. And while he was respected in his day, many of his most important theories were not proven until long after his death. Einstein credited Maxwell with laying the groundwork for his own seminal work.

Any author who attempts a life of James Maxwell has the daunting problem of explaining his work to the general reader. Unlike Faraday, who himself knew little math, Maxwell was a mathematical genius who took Faraday’s ideas and turned them into formulas that turned 19th century physics on its head. I do not think the book can be criticized for its lack of depth on the science of Maxwell. The book was not written for practicing scientists. Similarly, I don’t think the book can be criticized for being too technical. Mahon does as good a job as possible in describing Maxwell’s experiments and results. I had to reread some sections more than once to be relatively clear what Maxwell had achieved. This is partly my own lack of scientific expertise but also partly because Maxwell was, as Mahon notes, the first great physicist who explained nature in terms that could not be visualized. Maxwell himself was very aware of this. He constantly was trying to come up with analogies to help people understand what he was doing. His “spinning cells” analogy for electromagnetic fields is printed out by Mahon on pp. 100-101 in the book. But, as Maxwell also knew, these analogies could only go so far and his field equations simply cannot be put into nice visual form. Maxwell’s work began the ongoing situation in physics in which basic laws, from understanding the electron to black holes, cannot be accurately visualized by our minds. We try to picture them but images of “electron clouds” and black holes as drawn by artists cannot grasp what these phenomena are. They are structures necessarily understood mathematically, verified innumerable times, that leave the mechanistic world of physics behind. That is a major reason, again as Mahon notes, that Maxwell was understood by so few in his own time.

The comparison with William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, is helpful. Thomson’s name comes up frequently in this biography of Maxwell. In his superb biography of Lord Kelvin, David Lindley points out that Thomson never in his entire life gave up the mechanistic model of nature. He never agreed with the way that Maxwell saw the world. This adherence to a mechanical model makes the task of biography a bit easier for the author and Lindley does an excellent job of explaining Thomson’s work. But Mahon could not use the mechanical models available to Lindley in order to explain Maxwell’s work. Many t-shirts may have Maxwell’s field equations on them, but actually explaining them is something else again. I give Mahon credit for doing this for a general audience as well as could be done.

If Amazon had a 4.5 rating, that is what I would give the book. Aside from the problem of visualizing Maxwell’s work which is not the author’s fault, Mahon is not as strong a story teller as some other scientific biographers. His transitions are somewhat abrupt at times and the flow of the book could be smoother in places. Part of the reason for this is that many of Maxwell’s personal letters were destroyed and much of his personal life, e.g., information about his wife Katherine, is almost unknown. It is tough to tell a good story that is true if one does not have the information. But the issue, at least some of it, is also one of writing style.

None of the mild criticism I have should detract from the fact that this is a fine piece of work about a man who really did change everything. I definitely recommend this biography for anyone interested in the life James Clerk Maxwell.

This is a quite thoroughly wonderful book. Among other things,

it achieves the extraordinary feat of explaining Maxwell's

contributions in a way that's both entirely honest and entirely

clear even for lay readers. Then it transcends this feat by

making the science not just clear but riveting. A lesser author

might have watered down the ideas to make them palatable;

Mahon adds flavor instead. The portrait of Maxwell the man is as

gripping as the portrait of Maxwell the scientist, and both

portraits are beautifully intertwined. I love this book.

Unlike most science-related books, there were only a few pages within this biography that dealt with diagrams and equations. the majority of the novel consisted of stunning information regarding the life and mind of James Clerk Maxwell, who is often forgotten by the general public in favor of more prolific figures such as Joule and Farraday.

Although I'll go as far to admit that as a high schooler, this type of literature is not my favorite, I was surprised to find that this book captivated by imagination and allowed insight not just into the work but into the mind of Maxwell. For research purposes, this book contains a very useful index for efficient and easy fact-finding. Furthermore, the technical diagrams and equations were explained very well, and with sufficient time and patience could be understood.

Most amazing was Maxwell's life and career. His early entry into science and math (age 16) is both awesome and inspiring. Basil Mahon brings Maxwell's achievement into plain view with ease and language and an interesting style of writing so rarely found in science books today.

This Biography of James Maxwell started off with an introduction of his surroundings. His surrounding's included his place of living, parents, and more. He grows up in a safe, free, and open enviroment. His father is in the field of law and has a pretty good source of income. His mother dies of a

failed surgery but his father is still very supportive of him. Even though his father wants him to go in to the law field, James feels the urge of following his dreams of being a scientist. Other family members, and close friends can

see James's talent for mathmatics and they persuade James's father to let him study science. He goes to different schools, does very well, meets lots of

friends, and succeeds in what he concentrates on. Even at a very young age, he experiments with his own theories and makes remarkable discoveries.

I beleive this book has been one of the best scientist based biographies I have read. The format of the book was very logical and easy to follow. It did not jump around and was sequential like a story. Basil Mohan, I beleive, wrote

this book because James Maxwell was never really recognized for his work that he has done. He hasn't done any major, life changing work but he has affected the world of science and math. Most of his work was based of other mathmatician's work so he was never a big super scientist star. He did make corrections on previous works, simplified them, and wrote new updated formulas for out of date work. He did a lot of work with electromagnetic waves and found the basis of how to further technology which was based with electromagnetic waves.

This book is very readable and that's why I suggest it to you. Even though it is a biograpghy of a scientist, he was a unique character. I have never heard of him and now I see that there are scientists in the world who's name might never be heard of. There is a very good flow between the chapters and I enjoyed what I learned. Also, the book had a very happy tone and story-like readability so if you would like to read a book that has historical reference yet interesting facts I suggest this book to you.

Certainly not only mainstream physics is not on the right track- see my review of The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, by his same father, Erwin Schrodinger- but history too.

After reading this excellent biographical book by Basil Mahon, of the greatest physicist of all times, James Clerk Maxwell, who was not only that, but a great husband, a great son, a great friend and most importantly a great human being to whom mankind owes such a great deal. In effect why the great public and specially the young ones do not know such an example of a truly human being?

But let me share with you in this review some of the points I have pointed out in my copy of this book:

- James was invited to give a lecture at the Royal Institution on his work on colour vision...and so... The Royal Institution audience saw the world's first colour photograph.Pag93

- He believed strongly in the power of subconscious thoughts to generate insights...pag94

- James had shown how the electrical and magnetic forces which we experience could have their seat not in physical objects like magnets and wires but in energy stored in the space between and around the bodies.pag106

- Light must consist of electromagnetic waves. Some of the great leaps in science have come when two sets of apparently different phenomena are explained by a single new theory...This was one such leap: at a stroke, he had united the old science of optics with the much newer one of electromagnetism...pag109

- It was at this time, busy as he was with experiments... that Maxwell produced a paper which will remain forever one of the finest of all man's scientific accomplishment,
A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. Its boldness, originality and vision are breathtaking.pag119

- The negative idea was negative feedback... He wrote a paper called On Governors. It was the first mathematical analysis of control systems and became the foundation of modern control theory.pag140

- To James scientific facts were incomplete without the knowledge of how they came to be discovered.pag154

- We know little of Katherine- James's wife-...Whether or not Katherine deserves her reputation... It is also clear that they were loyally devoted to one another, with a strong spiritual sense of union, that they always shared their deepest thoughts, and that James always put Katherine's welfare before his own.pag169

- What is done by what I call myself is, I feel, done by something greater than myself in me...pag173

Recently when I have been investigating about the Eastern Inner science of Taoism, I find it perplexing how the West has its own great Masters, and without such a difficult trayectory, but by concentrating the mind on the great ideals of science.