What did maxwell do and how did he do it: An overview of Maxwell's treatise

摘要

Over a period of about twenty years, Maxwell's determination and unification of the equations of electricity and magnetism evolved from his first paper on the subject in 1855–56, “On Faraday's Lines of Force,” to the publication of his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in 1873. Notwithstanding the many historical accounts and textbooks devoted to Maxwell's work, I have not been able to find a reasonably concise, yet definitive summary of the fundamentals of exactly what Maxwell did in his Treatise and how he did it. This talk represents my own attempt to provide such a summary.