Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics

Book review: Faraday, Maxwell and The Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes & Basil MahonAll of us know Faraday and Maxwell from high school physics and think of them as geniuses. While that is evidently true, that is a limited perspective as we only studied what they discovered. This book is about how they went about finding what they discovered, and reveals them to be geniuses in an entirely different (and more useful) sense. Both demonstrated an extraordinary degree of integrity, pragmatism and intellectual humility in their work and at least for me, this was something that I neither realized nor appreciated until I read this book. While we’ll never be geniuses in the first sense, we can at least aspire to Faraday and Maxwell’s ideal in the second sense of the term. I’ll limit this review to these new facets that I didn’t know earlier and not to their work itself (which is not to imply that I got Maxwell’s equations at any point in my life).Faraday was a poor blacksmith’s son and never attended school. His first job was as a bookbinder’s assistant. He attended free science lectures in his spare time, took meticulous notes and even tried to replicate a few experiments. He so impressed people around him that he was gifted tickets to attend a lecture series of Humphry Davy, who was considered Britain’s foremost chemist at that time. His notes and dedication again impressed Davy, who offered him the only job he had – that of a bottle washer, essentially cleaning up a chemistry lab after the experiments were done. Faraday jumped at this opportunity as he knew what apprenticing under Davy was worth. In fact, for a while, he also doubled up at Davy’s valet. To Davy’s credit, he saw Faraday’s potential and Faraday soon graduated from being Davy’s collaborator in chemistry experiments to being an independent chemist himself. Chemistry was the cutting edge of science in that time and both Faraday and Davy simply aimed to operate at that frontier. Once Volta demonstrated the first electric battery, the frontier shifted from chemistry to electricity and both men simply followed the shifting frontier.Faraday was an unusually gifted experimental scientist, probably the best the world has seen. However, he was unusual in another sense as well – he was exceptionally meticulous not just in experiments, but also in honest record-keeping. He did something very rare – he wrote down equally detailed notes when an experiment failed or yielded a non-result as he did when an experiment succeeded. He then published all his notes, including countless experiments where he ran into dead-ends. His was probably the most unbiased and honest scientific record ever published.He had one huge weakness that ended up working to his advantage. His lack of formal education meant that he never worked on or followed higher-level mathematics. Despite being the foremost experimental scientist in electromagnetism, he never published a formal theory on the same and also held back criticizing other scientists who theorized in mathematical terms despite not having a fraction of the empirical experience that Faraday had. Personally, I speculate that mathematics was never beyond Faraday but he was put off by it being a strange, unfamiliar language. Ironically, the fancy theoreticians could think only in Newtonian terms – instantaneous action-at-distance between point objects along straight lines, a la gravity. Faraday was unburdened by this legacy and articulated the view that was ultimately proven correct – electromagnetic fields, with curved lines of force permeating all of space, with electromagnetic waves travelling at a finite speed. He was the first to see light as an electromagnetic wave and ran clever experiments to polarize light using currents and magnets. It was astounding that the least mathematical scientist also had the correct theoretical understanding of this brave new world, entirely on the strength of instincts honed by experiments and observation.Maxwell’s intellect was unmatched. At 14, he published a paper on geometry that was better than Descartes treatment of the same topic. He could pick up any topic and hold his own against the world’s best in that area. During a phase when Electromagnetism was his day-job, he also happened to be the foremost expert on the kinetic theory of gases (along with Boltzmann). However, the book brings out Maxwell’s second genius – as a diligent experimenter, who despite his genius, always placed experimental evidence over (even his) theory. He was very tentative in his theorizing, always clarifying that this was merely a way to model the world and need not be how the world actually worked. After proposing his kinetic theory of gases, he realized that if one of his inferences failed the experimental test, the theory was untenable. He set up an elaborate experiment at home (aided only by his non-scientist wife) to measure effect of pressure on viscosity, to stress test his own theory. When Maxwell first became interested in electromagnetism, he read all published work on the topic. At the end of that, he concluded that Faraday’s work had the most integrity and any theory that he came up with had to conform to Faraday’s bullet-proof experimental results. This criteria led him away from Newtonian models and he eventually ended up framing the theoretical construct that formalized what Faraday proposed in terms of fields, flux and waves. He was the first to relate the speed of light to electromagnetic constants. Although these constants had been determined by others, he insisted on conducting an independent experiment to derive the values of these constants, to really test whether his theory worked in practice.Both men were also pragmatic and grounded way beyond what one would typically expect of academics finding their way through a whole new field. Both had ‘line jobs’. Faraday had to make the Royal Institution sustainably profitable, through creating a technical-consulting arm and popularizing its lectures. Maxwell had to set up Cambridge University’s science lab from scratch and make it self-sustaining. Both played key roles in debugging the first telegraph cables, including the first trans-Atlantic cable. Faraday did pioneering work on ensuring safety and reliability of every light-house in Britain. Maxwell came up with industry-standards and test-procedures to make sure that the nascent electrical industry could make reliable products. They gave evidence-based advice on topics as esoteric as to whether British military should use poison gas (No. Wind patterns could bring it right back) and whether oatmeal in military rations was contaminated. This real-world aspect of their roles made them even more grounded in evidence and reality.History shows how correct both men were in their world view of a nascent field that no one in the world fully understood in their time. This seems to be, not merely due to their innate genius, but also due to the extraordinary degree of integrity, intellectual honesty, humility, pragmatism, rigor and reality-testing that both men made central to their work. Carl Sagan wrote that science wasn’t merely a body of knowledge, but a way of thinking. This book illustrates the scientific way of thinking better than any other.

book has good print quality and content

Just a physics graduate, later engineer, I always had interest for this science. I can't believe I had missed the full details of the fabulous contribution by these two - Faraday and Maxwell. The book has presented the biographical details admirably. Unbelievably, the book book has presented the science part too spendidly. It was very thoughtful to have briefly covered the science continuity after Maxwell, once again taking biography and science together, even if brevity ruled. I need to read the book all over again. (Ramiah Kumar)

This book is a tremendous work of beauty, passion & scholarship, written in very simple language accessible to every kind of science enthusiast. Incredible how the writing has brought to life the persona & the academics of the two greatest quintessential scientists. Fabulous work. Every student of science, even elementary school science, must read it to comprehend the spirit of science, which is so sadly missing mostly in today's world.

The book is good account of great discoveries by 2 giants. Inspirational.

The book takes the reader in the era when great Faraday and Maxwell explored the electromagnetic field. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the qualities of 'scientists '.

Thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. The life and achievement of the two wizards are narrated in necessary details. Very inspiring . Hard to put down.

The book reached before time,thanks to amazon prompt service.I read the book and found very interesting and informative and really the best book to my expectations.

Llego bien empaquetado, excelente libro. Aunque presento un daño ligero en la portada.

Great book content!

Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics by Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon“Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field” is an excellent, readable book on the life and contributions of two science giants, Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. Authors Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon join forces to provide the public a very enjoyable look at how the these two scientists built from successive ideas and discovered the electromagnetic field. This interesting 330-page book includes seventeen chapters, notes, a formal bibliography and an index.Positives:1. Professionally written science biographies blended into one accessible narrative.2. The fascinating topic of the scientists behind the electromagnetic field.3. The authors have great mastery of the topic but most importantly were able create an interesting narrative without resorting to the complex mathematics involved in physics and in particular, electromagnetism.4. Good use of diagrams to complement the excellent narrative.5. An excellent introduction that teases the public of what’s to come. “It is almost impossible to overstate the scale of Faraday and Maxwell's achievement in bringing the concept of the electromagnetic field into human thought. It united electricity, magnetism, and light into a single, compact theory; changed our way of life by bringing us radio, television, radar, satellite navigation, and mobile phones; inspired Einstein's special theory of relativity; and introduced the idea of field equations, which became the standard form used by today's physicists to model what goes on in the vastness of space and inside atoms.”6. In essence this book is the story of the electromagnetic field that is brought to you by blending the biographies of Faraday and Maxwell in chronological order.7. Throughout the book, the authors methodically and chronologically go through the lives of the scientists involved as new discoveries lead to scientific knowledge.8. A look at the history of electricity and magnetism. “Before 1800, all man-made electricity was static. The discovery of continuous currents came as a complete surprise and was in the best tradition of scientific serendipity.”9. The fascinating life of Michael Faraday, his strengths and weaknesses as a scientist. “We shall never know what Faraday would have achieved had he mastered mathematics, but, paradoxically, his ignorance may have been an advantage. It led him to derive his theories entirely from experimental observation rather than to deduce them from mathematical models.”10. Some of the world’s greatest inventions are highlighted in this book. “This time, the magnet revolved around the wire! Faraday had become a discoverer: he had made the world's first electric motor.”11. This book is intended for the laypersons but it doesn’t cheat those us in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) fields. The concepts are well described and satisfying. “The “quantity of electricity thrown into a current” was “directly as the amount of curves intersected.” This statement was true whether the curves were dense or sparse, converging or diverging, and neither the shape of the wire nor its mode of motion made any difference, except that the direction of the current depended on what became known as the right-hand rule. It was the original statement of one of the most fundamental laws of electromagnetism—now called simply Faraday's law of induction.”12. The genius of James Clerk Maxwell and how he was able to describe such esoteric concepts particularly for those times. “Maxwell's imaginary fluid was weightless, friction-free, and incompressible. This last property was the key to the analogy. It meant that the fluid had its own built-in inverse-square law: the speed of a particle of fluid flowing directly outward from a point source was inversely proportional to the square of its distance from the source.”13. Fascinating look at how Maxwell fed from Faraday’s own genius to take these concepts to a better understanding. “As Faraday had found, these substances varied in their ability to conduct electric lines of force—each had its own specific inductive capacity. For example, glass conducted electric lines of force more readily than wood. In his model, Maxwell accommodated this property simply by endowing each substance with the appropriate amount of resistance to fluid flow—the lower the resistance, the smaller the pressure gradient necessary to produce a given speed of flow.”14. The authors capture the essence of these great scientists and help readers gain a better understanding of who they were. “Though surpassed by his later writings, Maxwell's “On Faraday's Lines of Force”10 is, surely, one of the finest examples of creative thought in the history of science. In his book James Clerk Maxwell: Physicist and Natural Philosopher, Francis Everitt shrewdly characterizes Faraday as a cumulative thinker, Thomson as an inspirational thinker, and Maxwell as an architectural thinker. Maxwell had not only found a way to express Faraday's ideas in mathematical language but also built a foundation for still-greater work yet to come.”15. Goes over Maxwell’s manifesto, which was to produce a theory that explained all the known experimental laws of electricity and magnetism by deduction from general principles.16. Key concepts explained and differentiated, “Maxwell distinguished between two kinds of energy held by the field: electric energy was potential energy, like that in a coiled spring; and magnetic energy was kinetic, or “actual” energy, like that in a flywheel.” “Maxwell had achieved the seemingly impossible—he had derived the theory of the electromagnetic field directly from the laws of dynamics.”17. A look at the Maxwellians. “He straightaway wrote to Lodge to ask for a full text of his talk and soon found that he had another admirer, Lodge's friend George Francis Fitzgerald, who was professor of natural and experimental philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. Like Heaviside, Lodge and Fitzgerald had been captivated by Maxwell's work and both had been trying, first in isolation and then with mutual support, to carry it on. Now Heaviside, the independent recluse, had gained true friendship on his own terms, and the three of them, united in a common cause, became firm friends and formed the core of the group that came to be called the Maxwellians.”18. Einstein’s admiration for Maxwell. “As Einstein put it: Since Maxwell's time, physical reality has been thought of as represented by continuous fields and not capable of any mechanical interpretation. This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.”19. Provides a timeline and a photo insert.20. Notes and an invaluable formal bibliography.Negatives:1. The supplementary material that is included is good but limited. I would have included a list of all the scientists listed in this book and their discoveries. A helpful timeline is included but an additional supplements add value to the book.2. Even at it’s most accessible, if you don’t have much interest in science, this book will be difficult to get through. Not really a negative of the book just a reality check for onlookers.In summary, this is an excellent book that the layperson will enjoy and those in the field will cherish. The authors did a wonderful job of focusing on the grand work of these curious, driven scientists without obfuscating the narrative with esoteric equations. What a wonderful way to learn about the lives of two of the most significant scientists of the 19th century and their grand contributions to our lives today. I highly recommend it!Further recommendations: “The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell” by Basil Mahon, “The Electric Life of Michael Faraday” by Alan Hirshfeld, “Isaac Newton” by James Gleick, “Planck” by Brandon R. Brown, “QED” by Richard Feynman, “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” by Carlo Rovelli, “Tesla” by W. Bernard Carlson, “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson, and “Gravity” and “The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein” by George Gamow.

英国人ファラデー，スコットランド人マクスウェルという両巨頭の伝記で，それぞれ感動的な逸話を含めて記述されている。また，現代物理学に欠かせない場という概念を二人が創始し，推進したことが強調されている。物理に関する説明が丁寧に述べられている。

The book provides a good historical background and helps us to better understand the importance of the astounding body of work performed by these two men of science. Their work and, above all, their intelligence and integrity make me feel very proud of the human race.