Electricity and the Atom: Davy, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, and Thomson (England and Scotland, 1801–1907)

Abstract

A discussion of the role of electricity and magnetism in the development of the atom starts with Humphry Davy, who has moved to the Royal Institution (Ri) in London, where his good looks and flamboyant lectures make him an instant celebrity. Using Alessandro Volta's voltaic pile, Davy discovers six elements in two years. Davy's assistant, Michael Faraday, accompanies his mentor on a grand tour of Europe, and ultimately becomes one of the greatest experimental physicists of all time. We see a variety of Faraday sites all over London, including his magnetic laboratory in the Ri. The Scotsman, James Clerk Maxwell, put Faraday's experimental work on a firm mathematical basis and described light as electromagnetic radiation (1864). We follow Clerk Maxwell from his birthplace at what is now the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation in Edinburgh, his childhood and adult life at the Maxwell Estate at Glenlair House in Nether Corsock, the magnificent stained-glass window in his honor in a church in Corsock, and the Old and New Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge. Sir John Joseph (“J. J.”) Thomson discovered the electron (1897), established the esprit de corps at the Cavendish, and advocated his “plum-pudding” model of the atom.