As great as James Clerk Maxwell’s theories on electricity and magnetism were, they were also mathematically difficult and hard to understand. Almost nobody understood it during his lifetime and it didn't help much that his whole approach was based off of Michael Faradays theoretical vision. Maxwell did not attempt to verify his theory experimentally, and after he died his theory sat for some time, waiting for someone else to come and perfect it.
Oliver Heaviside was born in 1850 and came down with scarlet fever at the age of eight leaving him partially deaf. Instead of attending a university, he spent two years at home studying on his own. Oliver later got his only job at the age of eighteen working with his uncle as a telegraph operator. He quickly mastered the art and within two years he got promoted to chief operator.
One day while studying in the library he opened Maxwells’s Treaty on Electricity and Magnetism(1873), and was “astonished!” He became determined to master the subject and learn all he could about electricity. He became tired of his job and retired to his parents home to research the topic. Eventually he was able not only “to master the theory but also to re-express it in a form that was much easier to grasp.” (p246)
One way he simplified the theory was by creating a mathematical language which he called, “Vector Analysis.” Maxwell used quaternions to represent his theory but Oliver found them useless and complicated. P.G. Tait had criticized Heaviside’s mutillation of quaternions by describing his vector analysis as “a hermaphrodite monster.” Oliver responded by calling him a “consummately profound metaphysicomathematician” (p.259)
Another way that he was able to re-express the theory was by concentrating on field forces and get rid of the potentials. This way he reduced Maxwell’s eight quaternions to only four equations(p247). His four equations became famously known as Maxwell’s equations.
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