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James Clerk Maxwell FRS FRSE (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish physicist and mathematician [1] who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon.
The electromagnetic theory of light adds to the old undulatory theory an enormous province of transcendent interest and importance; it demands of us not merely an explanation of all the phenomena of light and radiant heat by transverse vibrations of an elastic solid called ether, but also the inclusion of electric currents, of the permanent ...
Using available data, he obtains a velocity of 310 740 000 m/s and states "This velocity is so nearly that of light, that it seems we have strong reason to conclude that light itself (including radiant heat, and other radiations if any) is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according ...
Maxwell's theory predicted that coupled electric and magnetic fields could travel through space as an "electromagnetic wave". Maxwell proposed that light consisted of electromagnetic waves of short wavelength, but no one had been able to prove this, or generate or detect electromagnetic waves of other wavelengths. [15]
This may be the most remarkable contribution of Maxwell's work, enabling him to derive the electromagnetic wave equation in his 1865 paper A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, showing that light is an electromagnetic wave. This lent the equations their full significance with respect to understanding the nature of the phenomena he ...
A theory of electromagnetism, known as classical electromagnetism, was developed by several physicists during the period between 1820 and 1873, when James Clerk Maxwell's treatise was published, which unified previous developments into a single theory, proposing that light was an electromagnetic wave propagating in the luminiferous ether. [26]
For example, there were many advances in the field of optics centuries before light was understood to be an electromagnetic wave. However, the theory of electromagnetism , as it is currently understood, grew out of Michael Faraday 's experiments suggesting the existence of an electromagnetic field and James Clerk Maxwell 's use of differential ...
The publication of the equations marked the unification of a theory for previously separately described phenomena: magnetism, electricity, light, and associated radiation. Since the mid-20th century, it has been understood that Maxwell's equations do not give an exact description of electromagnetic phenomena, but are instead a classical limit ...