Ellipses, not Exclamation Points: Crediting Discoveries in the Scientific World
In January 2015, author and former officer in the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Basil Mahon published a cleverly titled article, “How Maxwell’s Equations Came to Light,” in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Photonics. The article is rooted in the laws of electrodynamics, and its story gravitates around Maxwell’s presentation of those laws in 1864. Mahon reaches back to the 1820s, when scientists believed that electricity and magnetism were unrelated. That all changed, he recounts, with Hans Christian Oersted’s experiments with magnetism and electricity, which set the foundation for Michael Faraday’s innovative experiments and Andre Marie Ampere’s mathematically-strong contributions. Mahon then outlines how the theories were explored and refined as they bounced between Faraday, Ampere, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the Royal Society of modern-day UK — which both were and are national organizations of science, education, and outreach — and other unnamed scientists. The author argues that that turbulence began to settle when “a man of equal stature and complementary talents” to Faraday came up with a finished theory on the relationship between electricity and magnetism after wrestling with it off-and-on for years. This man was James Clerk Maxwell. Mahon actually attributes the widespread adoption of the theory to the work of a man named Oliver Heaviside, as he transformed the equations from a complicated, practically incomprehensible array of facts into a digestible and enticingly compact form. But the author concludes with a few arguments to support his main commentary on the equations: that they should truly be called “Maxwell’s equations” and not “Heaviside’s equations.” Overall, Mahon’s storytelling is riveting, detailed, and increasing in action up until these seemingly out-of-place, short conjectures. But, much like Maxwell’s equations themselves, they point to a more complex truth in an enigmatically and enchantingly compact form. The facts of this truth are that objectively, Maxwell did most of the work, and pragmatically, using Maxwell’s name gives greater access to the toolset that he enumerated.
Attributing the equations to Maxwell gives credit to the man who truly did the most significant work. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers agrees with Mahon that Maxwell’s speech at the Royal Society of London was the first time that the world had seen a fully-formed unified theory of physics. The novelty of the work, coupled with the apparent bewilderment of the audience, who “did not know what to make of it,” necessitates the relative responsibility of the man who wrote the theory. Other scientists were instrumental in leading up to the discovery, and Mahon spends much of his article describing their contributions. But arguing that they should get credited in the name of the equations would imply that we should name new breakthroughs or inventions after the discoveries that they were based on. This would be ludicrous at worst and cumbersome at best; following Mahon’s account, the work should be called some permutation of “Oersted and Faraday and Ampere and Maxwell and Heaviside’s Equations.” Beyond mere naming conventions, the complexity of attribution can be seen in the modern example of Steve Jobs and the success of the iPhone. One common argument is that the integral lead team of designers and engineers of the phone should get all of the credit, and Jobs, merely the CEO and salesman of Apple, should get none. But it was Jobs’s unconventional thinking that birthed the device, first with his initial idea that a glass multi-touch surface could be made into a cell phone with only a few buttons, and then with his insistence that the team should keep developing against seemingly insurmountable technical difficulties. From ideation to development to presentation, he oversaw the entire process of stitching together technologies until the culmination of a complete product. As a result of his leadership, the world was changed. Similarly, even though Heaviside was indeed a key player in the presentation of an audience-facing final product, and the scientists besides Maxwell were responsible for ideation and testing, only Maxwell synthesized the work of those before him into a finished product. Just as Jobs’s leadership changed the world, Maxwell’s theory was just as seminal, and Mahon correctly prescribes the origins of the equations to his tireless work developing it.
Mahon strategically constructs his nuanced viewpoint to highlight that the name “Maxwell” is a better interface to the history of electricity and magnetism than the name “Heaviside”: even though Heaviside, the “self-taught former telegraph operator,” had a belief as unconventional and world-changing as Jobs did, his story in this context is not the epicenter of the electromagnetism developments. The incredible fact that such powerful equations can be summarized so succinctly naturally begs the question of the greater story of their invention, and for such a strong titillation, a student of the sciences must be led to the heart of the development. I personally remember being astounded that several lectures’ worth of my college physics education could be represented on one presentation slide, and I immediately became curious about James Maxwell. I also questioned how he was responsible for all of these revelations. Pointing to Maxwell also reveals the stories of his predecessors, collaborators, successors, and even opposition. Formally trained and self-taught scientists and mathematicians temporally flank the incubation period of experimentation with magnets and electricity. While Heaviside’s contribution was important, it was part of the re-discovery and affirmation of past work. Mahon appropriately recognizes that Heaviside’s summarization of the equations was an interface of a pre- and post-electromagnetic world rather than the strongest foundation of that change. This provides modern-day minds the easiest entry point into the larger story behind the equations, which is an incredible collaboration that began with a world of incorrect science, was kickstarted by an experimenter, took a pivot via Maxwell, was reinvigorated by a self-taught mathematician, and ended with the modern academic world we know today.
Because Maxwell is arguably the most important originator of modern-day physics theory, and the convention of naming discoveries after their inventor enables greater ripples through story-telling, Mahon’s piece is well-crafted to reflect why Maxwell should hold the title for the equations. The fully fleshed-out theory was complete and just needed proper presentation. This shines a light on the importance of the accessibility of information, which allows people to see, explore, and affirm for themselves the validity of an otherwise out-of-reach theory. Mahon does do Heaviside justice in this respect by telling his story, not just here, but also in two separate books dedicated solely to the telegraph-operator-turned-mathematician. But once again, those who raise questions, construct answers, and package results all require different types of attribution than a share of naming credits. Philosophically, those who make it accessible are just as important, but they are the discoverers, not the originators. Unfortunately, we do not have such a structure as pervasive to widely name these people. But is the job of humans to continuously recover, question, explore, and build upon these works. In this way, everyone can be a part of the story, with their own contributions and theories to build a better-understood future.
Bibliography
Steve Jobs in 2010, at D8 Conference (Full Video). February 08, 2015. Accessed February 06, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps.
Mahon, Basil. “The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell.” Wiley.com. October 15, 2004. Accessed February 06, 2018. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The Man Who Changed Everything%3A The Life of James Clerk Maxwell-p-9780470861714.
Rautio, James C. “The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. December 01, 2014. Accessed February 06, 2018. https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/the-long-road-to-maxwells-equations.
“The Forgotten Genius of Oliver Heaviside by Basil Mahon.” PenguinRandomhouse.com. Accessed February 06, 2018. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/556320/the-forgotten-genius-of-oliver-heaviside-by-basil-mahon/9781633883314/.
