We must celebrate the Scot behind ‘most significant event of 19th century’ – leader comment
Albert Einstein was once asked whether his work had been possible because he had “stood on the shoulders of [Isaac] Newton”. “No,” he replied, “on the shoulders of Maxwell.”
The Nobel Prize winner Max Planck declared the Edinburgh-born scientist had “achieved greatness unequalled”, while Richard Feynman, another Nobel laureate, said: “From a long view of the history of mankind – seen from, say, 10,000 years from now – there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.”
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Hide AdNow comes the news that, some 140 years after Maxwell’s death, a new kind of light wave has been discovered by scientists at Edinburgh and Pennsylvania State universities in research based partly on equations that he developed.
Celebrating such a legacy is far from parochial. Scotland should do it on behalf of the whole of humanity.
READ MORE: James Clerk Maxwell: The Scots genius in love with numbers and nature