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mmcirvinI already knew this guy was a giant when I was in school, for the following reasons:
1. The biggie: he figured out what light was made of (to the extent that one could prior to quantum mechanics). This in turn suggested the possibility of radio and all that it implies, though Hertz typically gets more of the credit for that.
(I've always wondered what that moment must have been like, when he calculated the speed of electromagnetic waves, and realized that it was identical to the known speed of light. Was there an "aha" moment then? Or did he suspect early on that the self-sustaining phenomena that could arise with his addition to the electromagnetic equations were the light waves that Huygens had proposed, and just take the identity of speeds as a confirmation of his hunch?)
2. Anyway, in doing so, he completed and made internally consistent the classical theory of electromagnetism, setting the stage for the development of relativity and for the general science of field theory, part of the basis of all modern fundamental physics.
3. He was also one of the founders of statistical mechanics, extending thermodynamic theory into the microscopic realm.
But the next two, I didn't find out about until I changed careers:
4. He made pioneering studies of human color vision, and came up with a color classification system that was a direct ancestor of the CIE scheme still used in the printing, publishing and graphics industries.
5. He arguably took the first color photograph, though his process was crude and the colors came out screwy, because they mostly arose from light beyond the human visual range.
This one I just found:
6. He messed around with zoetropes, and the use of clay sculpture for 3D scientific visualization.
In conclusion, you should be highly impressed by James Clerk Maxwell.
1. The biggie: he figured out what light was made of (to the extent that one could prior to quantum mechanics). This in turn suggested the possibility of radio and all that it implies, though Hertz typically gets more of the credit for that.
(I've always wondered what that moment must have been like, when he calculated the speed of electromagnetic waves, and realized that it was identical to the known speed of light. Was there an "aha" moment then? Or did he suspect early on that the self-sustaining phenomena that could arise with his addition to the electromagnetic equations were the light waves that Huygens had proposed, and just take the identity of speeds as a confirmation of his hunch?)
2. Anyway, in doing so, he completed and made internally consistent the classical theory of electromagnetism, setting the stage for the development of relativity and for the general science of field theory, part of the basis of all modern fundamental physics.
3. He was also one of the founders of statistical mechanics, extending thermodynamic theory into the microscopic realm.
But the next two, I didn't find out about until I changed careers:
4. He made pioneering studies of human color vision, and came up with a color classification system that was a direct ancestor of the CIE scheme still used in the printing, publishing and graphics industries.
5. He arguably took the first color photograph, though his process was crude and the colors came out screwy, because they mostly arose from light beyond the human visual range.
This one I just found:
6. He messed around with zoetropes, and the use of clay sculpture for 3D scientific visualization.
In conclusion, you should be highly impressed by James Clerk Maxwell.