James Clerk Maxwell was one of the most important and innovative scientists ever to live, right up there with Newton and Einstein.
Maxwell fundamentally transformed our understanding of the physical world.
Michael Faraday had recently used a magnet to generate electricity, and there was tremendous excitement around this phenomenon. Naturally, scientists were intrigued by the link between the two forces, but nobody could explain how it worked.
Not only did Maxwell eventually formulate equations to describe exactly how electricity and magnetism were manifestations of the same force, he also went much, much further than anyone expected.
Maxwell went on to show that all electromagnetic radiation—all of it—was light.
Light, you say? That’s right: the colors we see are just visible light, but with different wavelengths. Some types of light are invisible, like infrared or ultraviolet radiation, but it was all light. Electricity, magnetism, and now even optics were all the same phenomenon, j…
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