A bold unifying leap

摘要

What is it that makes physicists proud to be physicists? One answer lies in James Clerk Maxwell's equations. Physicists can rejoice in a historical moment of great insight, can share in the expressions of that insight that only they can understand in any depth, can bond over surviving the didactic stress that many students experience in learning to apply them and, above all, can roam freely in deploying the power thus provided for understanding the world and, on occasion, changing it.