Who was James Clerk Maxwell and what is/was his electromagnetic theory

Abstract

The electromagnetic community makes a living out of Maxwellpsilas name yet very few researchers really know what actually did Maxwell do? The goal of this presentation is to make the point that Maxwell was one of the greatest scientist of the last century and he could be called so even if he did not do any work on electromagnetic theory. He did develop however almost all aspects of electrical engineering and many branches of modern physics. His name is primarily associated with the famous four equations called Maxwellpsilas equations. The crux of the matter is that Maxwell did not write those four equations that we use today. They were first put in the scalar form by Heinrich Hertz and in the vector form by Oliver Heaviside, who did not even have a college education! That is why Einstein used to call it the Maxwell-Hertz-Heaviside equations. The goal of this presentation is to illustrate those points and finally what exactly did Maxwell do to come to the conclusion that light was electromagnetic in nature.