It goes without saying that James Clerk Maxwell was a genius. Because of my study of electricity and electromagnetism (admittedly at only the practical level), I was primarily interested in this scientist because of his mathematical work on electromagnetism. In examining his life and career, I have found that not only was he brilliant in many other aspects of physics, but was also a devout Christian--not something that today's scientists tend to like to acknowledge. I also like that he had an appreciation of poetry.
I don't know when I will be able to write more comprehensively about Maxwell's work, but I hope to examine and write about some of his work in physics at a later time. For now, let me just say that he is on my top ten list of scientists that I greatly admire.
A general statement about Maxwell's equations:
In classical electromagnetism, Maxwell's equations are a set of four partial differential equations that describe the properties of the electric and magnetic fields and relate them to their sources, charge density and current density. These equations are used to show that light is an electromagnetic wave. Individually, the equations are known as Gauss' law, Gauss' law for magnetism, Faraday's law of induction, and Ampère's law with Maxwell's correction.
These four equations, together with the Lorentz force law (derived by Maxwell), are the complete set of laws of classical electromagnetism.
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