--- product_id: 179114191 title: "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics" price: "€ 41.79" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.pt/products/179114191-faraday-maxwell-and-the-electromagnetic-field-how-two-men-revolutionized store_origin: PT region: Portugal --- # Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics **Price:** € 41.79 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics - **How much does it cost?** € 41.79 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.pt](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/179114191-faraday-maxwell-and-the-electromagnetic-field-how-two-men-revolutionized) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description The story of two brilliant nineteenth-century scientists who discovered the electromagnetic field, laying the groundwork for the amazing technological and theoretical breakthroughs of the twentieth centuryTwo of the boldest and most creative scientists of all time were Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). This is the story of how these two men - separated in age by forty years - discovered the existence of the electromagnetic field and devised a radically new theory which overturned the strictly mechanical view of the world that had prevailed since Newton's time.The authors, veteran science writers with special expertise in physics and engineering, have created a lively narrative that interweaves rich biographical detail from each man's life with clear explanations of their scientific accomplishments. Faraday was an autodidact, who overcame class prejudice and a lack of mathematical training to become renowned for his acute powers of experimental observation, technological skills, and prodigious scientific imagination. James Clerk Maxwell was highly regarded as one of the most brilliant mathematical physicists of the age. He made an enormous number of advances in his own right. But when he translated Faraday's ideas into mathematical language, thus creating field theory, this unified framework of electricity, magnetism and light became the basis for much of later, 20th-century physics.Faraday's and Maxwell's collaborative efforts gave rise to many of the technological innovations we take for granted today - from electric power generation to television, and much more. Told with panache, warmth, and clarity, this captivating story of their greatest work - in which each played an equal part - and their inspiring lives will bring new appreciation to these giants of science. Review: Best illustration of science as a way of thinking - Book review: Faraday, Maxwell and The Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes & Basil Mahon All of us know Faraday and Maxwell from high school physics and think of them as geniuses. While that is evidently true, that is a limited perspective as we only studied what they discovered. This book is about how they went about finding what they discovered, and reveals them to be geniuses in an entirely different (and more useful) sense. Both demonstrated an extraordinary degree of integrity, pragmatism and intellectual humility in their work and at least for me, this was something that I neither realized nor appreciated until I read this book. While we’ll never be geniuses in the first sense, we can at least aspire to Faraday and Maxwell’s ideal in the second sense of the term. I’ll limit this review to these new facets that I didn’t know earlier and not to their work itself (which is not to imply that I got Maxwell’s equations at any point in my life). Faraday was a poor blacksmith’s son and never attended school. His first job was as a bookbinder’s assistant. He attended free science lectures in his spare time, took meticulous notes and even tried to replicate a few experiments. He so impressed people around him that he was gifted tickets to attend a lecture series of Humphry Davy, who was considered Britain’s foremost chemist at that time. His notes and dedication again impressed Davy, who offered him the only job he had – that of a bottle washer, essentially cleaning up a chemistry lab after the experiments were done. Faraday jumped at this opportunity as he knew what apprenticing under Davy was worth. In fact, for a while, he also doubled up at Davy’s valet. To Davy’s credit, he saw Faraday’s potential and Faraday soon graduated from being Davy’s collaborator in chemistry experiments to being an independent chemist himself. Chemistry was the cutting edge of science in that time and both Faraday and Davy simply aimed to operate at that frontier. Once Volta demonstrated the first electric battery, the frontier shifted from chemistry to electricity and both men simply followed the shifting frontier. Faraday was an unusually gifted experimental scientist, probably the best the world has seen. However, he was unusual in another sense as well – he was exceptionally meticulous not just in experiments, but also in honest record-keeping. He did something very rare – he wrote down equally detailed notes when an experiment failed or yielded a non-result as he did when an experiment succeeded. He then published all his notes, including countless experiments where he ran into dead-ends. His was probably the most unbiased and honest scientific record ever published. He had one huge weakness that ended up working to his advantage. His lack of formal education meant that he never worked on or followed higher-level mathematics. Despite being the foremost experimental scientist in electromagnetism, he never published a formal theory on the same and also held back criticizing other scientists who theorized in mathematical terms despite not having a fraction of the empirical experience that Faraday had. Personally, I speculate that mathematics was never beyond Faraday but he was put off by it being a strange, unfamiliar language. Ironically, the fancy theoreticians could think only in Newtonian terms – instantaneous action-at-distance between point objects along straight lines, a la gravity. Faraday was unburdened by this legacy and articulated the view that was ultimately proven correct – electromagnetic fields, with curved lines of force permeating all of space, with electromagnetic waves travelling at a finite speed. He was the first to see light as an electromagnetic wave and ran clever experiments to polarize light using currents and magnets. It was astounding that the least mathematical scientist also had the correct theoretical understanding of this brave new world, entirely on the strength of instincts honed by experiments and observation. Maxwell’s intellect was unmatched. At 14, he published a paper on geometry that was better than Descartes treatment of the same topic. He could pick up any topic and hold his own against the world’s best in that area. During a phase when Electromagnetism was his day-job, he also happened to be the foremost expert on the kinetic theory of gases (along with Boltzmann). However, the book brings out Maxwell’s second genius – as a diligent experimenter, who despite his genius, always placed experimental evidence over (even his) theory. He was very tentative in his theorizing, always clarifying that this was merely a way to model the world and need not be how the world actually worked. After proposing his kinetic theory of gases, he realized that if one of his inferences failed the experimental test, the theory was untenable. He set up an elaborate experiment at home (aided only by his non-scientist wife) to measure effect of pressure on viscosity, to stress test his own theory. When Maxwell first became interested in electromagnetism, he read all published work on the topic. At the end of that, he concluded that Faraday’s work had the most integrity and any theory that he came up with had to conform to Faraday’s bullet-proof experimental results. This criteria led him away from Newtonian models and he eventually ended up framing the theoretical construct that formalized what Faraday proposed in terms of fields, flux and waves. He was the first to relate the speed of light to electromagnetic constants. Although these constants had been determined by others, he insisted on conducting an independent experiment to derive the values of these constants, to really test whether his theory worked in practice. Both men were also pragmatic and grounded way beyond what one would typically expect of academics finding their way through a whole new field. Both had ‘line jobs’. Faraday had to make the Royal Institution sustainably profitable, through creating a technical-consulting arm and popularizing its lectures. Maxwell had to set up Cambridge University’s science lab from scratch and make it self-sustaining. Both played key roles in debugging the first telegraph cables, including the first trans-Atlantic cable. Faraday did pioneering work on ensuring safety and reliability of every light-house in Britain. Maxwell came up with industry-standards and test-procedures to make sure that the nascent electrical industry could make reliable products. They gave evidence-based advice on topics as esoteric as to whether British military should use poison gas (No. Wind patterns could bring it right back) and whether oatmeal in military rations was contaminated. This real-world aspect of their roles made them even more grounded in evidence and reality. History shows how correct both men were in their world view of a nascent field that no one in the world fully understood in their time. This seems to be, not merely due to their innate genius, but also due to the extraordinary degree of integrity, intellectual honesty, humility, pragmatism, rigor and reality-testing that both men made central to their work. Carl Sagan wrote that science wasn’t merely a body of knowledge, but a way of thinking. This book illustrates the scientific way of thinking better than any other. Review: Glory of physics after Newton and before Einstein - Just a physics graduate, later engineer, I always had interest for this science. I can't believe I had missed the full details of the fabulous contribution by these two - Faraday and Maxwell. The book has presented the biographical details admirably. Unbelievably, the book book has presented the science part too spendidly. It was very thoughtful to have briefly covered the science continuity after Maxwell, once again taking biography and science together, even if brevity ruled. I need to read the book all over again. (Ramiah Kumar) ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #65,477 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #2,693 in Biographies & Autobiographies (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 972 Reviews | ## Images ![Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71sIkEVjl8L.jpg) ## Available Options This product comes in different **Media Format** options. ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Best illustration of science as a way of thinking *by A***D on 30 April 2018* Book review: Faraday, Maxwell and The Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes & Basil Mahon All of us know Faraday and Maxwell from high school physics and think of them as geniuses. While that is evidently true, that is a limited perspective as we only studied what they discovered. This book is about how they went about finding what they discovered, and reveals them to be geniuses in an entirely different (and more useful) sense. Both demonstrated an extraordinary degree of integrity, pragmatism and intellectual humility in their work and at least for me, this was something that I neither realized nor appreciated until I read this book. While we’ll never be geniuses in the first sense, we can at least aspire to Faraday and Maxwell’s ideal in the second sense of the term. I’ll limit this review to these new facets that I didn’t know earlier and not to their work itself (which is not to imply that I got Maxwell’s equations at any point in my life). Faraday was a poor blacksmith’s son and never attended school. His first job was as a bookbinder’s assistant. He attended free science lectures in his spare time, took meticulous notes and even tried to replicate a few experiments. He so impressed people around him that he was gifted tickets to attend a lecture series of Humphry Davy, who was considered Britain’s foremost chemist at that time. His notes and dedication again impressed Davy, who offered him the only job he had – that of a bottle washer, essentially cleaning up a chemistry lab after the experiments were done. Faraday jumped at this opportunity as he knew what apprenticing under Davy was worth. In fact, for a while, he also doubled up at Davy’s valet. To Davy’s credit, he saw Faraday’s potential and Faraday soon graduated from being Davy’s collaborator in chemistry experiments to being an independent chemist himself. Chemistry was the cutting edge of science in that time and both Faraday and Davy simply aimed to operate at that frontier. Once Volta demonstrated the first electric battery, the frontier shifted from chemistry to electricity and both men simply followed the shifting frontier. Faraday was an unusually gifted experimental scientist, probably the best the world has seen. However, he was unusual in another sense as well – he was exceptionally meticulous not just in experiments, but also in honest record-keeping. He did something very rare – he wrote down equally detailed notes when an experiment failed or yielded a non-result as he did when an experiment succeeded. He then published all his notes, including countless experiments where he ran into dead-ends. His was probably the most unbiased and honest scientific record ever published. He had one huge weakness that ended up working to his advantage. His lack of formal education meant that he never worked on or followed higher-level mathematics. Despite being the foremost experimental scientist in electromagnetism, he never published a formal theory on the same and also held back criticizing other scientists who theorized in mathematical terms despite not having a fraction of the empirical experience that Faraday had. Personally, I speculate that mathematics was never beyond Faraday but he was put off by it being a strange, unfamiliar language. Ironically, the fancy theoreticians could think only in Newtonian terms – instantaneous action-at-distance between point objects along straight lines, a la gravity. Faraday was unburdened by this legacy and articulated the view that was ultimately proven correct – electromagnetic fields, with curved lines of force permeating all of space, with electromagnetic waves travelling at a finite speed. He was the first to see light as an electromagnetic wave and ran clever experiments to polarize light using currents and magnets. It was astounding that the least mathematical scientist also had the correct theoretical understanding of this brave new world, entirely on the strength of instincts honed by experiments and observation. Maxwell’s intellect was unmatched. At 14, he published a paper on geometry that was better than Descartes treatment of the same topic. He could pick up any topic and hold his own against the world’s best in that area. During a phase when Electromagnetism was his day-job, he also happened to be the foremost expert on the kinetic theory of gases (along with Boltzmann). However, the book brings out Maxwell’s second genius – as a diligent experimenter, who despite his genius, always placed experimental evidence over (even his) theory. He was very tentative in his theorizing, always clarifying that this was merely a way to model the world and need not be how the world actually worked. After proposing his kinetic theory of gases, he realized that if one of his inferences failed the experimental test, the theory was untenable. He set up an elaborate experiment at home (aided only by his non-scientist wife) to measure effect of pressure on viscosity, to stress test his own theory. When Maxwell first became interested in electromagnetism, he read all published work on the topic. At the end of that, he concluded that Faraday’s work had the most integrity and any theory that he came up with had to conform to Faraday’s bullet-proof experimental results. This criteria led him away from Newtonian models and he eventually ended up framing the theoretical construct that formalized what Faraday proposed in terms of fields, flux and waves. He was the first to relate the speed of light to electromagnetic constants. Although these constants had been determined by others, he insisted on conducting an independent experiment to derive the values of these constants, to really test whether his theory worked in practice. Both men were also pragmatic and grounded way beyond what one would typically expect of academics finding their way through a whole new field. Both had ‘line jobs’. Faraday had to make the Royal Institution sustainably profitable, through creating a technical-consulting arm and popularizing its lectures. Maxwell had to set up Cambridge University’s science lab from scratch and make it self-sustaining. Both played key roles in debugging the first telegraph cables, including the first trans-Atlantic cable. Faraday did pioneering work on ensuring safety and reliability of every light-house in Britain. Maxwell came up with industry-standards and test-procedures to make sure that the nascent electrical industry could make reliable products. They gave evidence-based advice on topics as esoteric as to whether British military should use poison gas (No. Wind patterns could bring it right back) and whether oatmeal in military rations was contaminated. This real-world aspect of their roles made them even more grounded in evidence and reality. History shows how correct both men were in their world view of a nascent field that no one in the world fully understood in their time. This seems to be, not merely due to their innate genius, but also due to the extraordinary degree of integrity, intellectual honesty, humility, pragmatism, rigor and reality-testing that both men made central to their work. Carl Sagan wrote that science wasn’t merely a body of knowledge, but a way of thinking. This book illustrates the scientific way of thinking better than any other. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Glory of physics after Newton and before Einstein *by G***R on 5 April 2017* Just a physics graduate, later engineer, I always had interest for this science. I can't believe I had missed the full details of the fabulous contribution by these two - Faraday and Maxwell. The book has presented the biographical details admirably. Unbelievably, the book book has presented the science part too spendidly. It was very thoughtful to have briefly covered the science continuity after Maxwell, once again taking biography and science together, even if brevity ruled. I need to read the book all over again. (Ramiah Kumar) ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Shoulders of the Giants *by M***I on 8 November 2017* This book is a tremendous work of beauty, passion & scholarship, written in very simple language accessible to every kind of science enthusiast. Incredible how the writing has brought to life the persona & the academics of the two greatest quintessential scientists. Fabulous work. Every student of science, even elementary school science, must read it to comprehend the spirit of science, which is so sadly missing mostly in today's world. ## Frequently Bought Together - Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics - How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It - Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.pt/products/179114191-faraday-maxwell-and-the-electromagnetic-field-how-two-men-revolutionized](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/179114191-faraday-maxwell-and-the-electromagnetic-field-how-two-men-revolutionized) --- *Product available on Desertcart Portugal* *Store origin: PT* *Last updated: 2026-08-28*