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James Maxwell
In thermodynamics, James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was a Scottish mathematician, physicist, and is considered one of the core founders of thermodynamics, noted for his 1860 development of the kinetic theory of gases, his 1871 book Theory of Heat, and his 1873 theory of electromagnetism. His studies of kinetic theory led him to propose the Maxwell's demon paradox in a 1867 letter to Scottish physicist Peter Tait. [1]
In 1859, after reading the 1857 paper "About the Nature of the Movement, Which we call Heat" by German physicist Rudolf Clausius, Maxwell formulated what is known as the "Maxwell distribution" of molecular velocities, which gave the proportion of molecules having a certain velocity in a specific range. [2] This was the first ever statistical law in physics. [3]
His 1873 publication A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, introduced the world to Maxwell equations, the four governing equations on the phenomenon of electricity and magnetism. Maxwell showed that these equations implicitly required the existence of electromagnetic waves traveling at the speed of light.
References
1. James Maxwell – Eric Weisstein’s World of Scientific Biography.
2. Clausius, R. (1857), "Über die Art der Bewegung, die wir Wärme nennen" (About the Nature of the Movement, Which we call Heat), Annalen der Physik 100: 353-379.
3. Mahon, Basil (2003). The Man Who Changed Everything – the Life of James Clerk Maxwell. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
4. Maxwell, James C. (1873). A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Volume One). New York: Dover.
Sadi-Carnot |
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