Electricity and Consilience. Part 2

Part 1: https://steemit.com/science/@pinkspectre/electricity-and-concilience-part-1

Michael Faraday.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, electromagnetic forces seemed to show great promise in explaining our universe. As early as 1840, Michael Faraday, the great English scientist, was attempting to link gravity with electromagnetism. Faraday had solved the puzzle provided by Danish chemist Hans Christian Ørsted's discovery of electromagnetism, with the concept of force-fields, and established a link between light and magnetism. His discoveries in induction, electrolysis and diamagnetism as well as his construction of the first electric motor prototypes gave birth to the modern electrified age.

Faraday's magnetic rotation.

In his Experimental Researches in Electricity he noted that by weaving together various observed physical phenomena as effects of a single fundamental power, "no terms could exaggerate the value of the relation they would establish' (229).

Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Brilliant mathematician Carl Gauss and physicist Wilhelm Weber were soon building upon Faraday's knowledge in Germany, making more important discoveries into the electrical interactions of matter including taking measurements of the Earth's magnetic field. In the 1860's, James Clerk Maxwell would usher in a second Grand Unification in physics, after Newton, realizing that electricity, magnetism and light are but facets of a single phenomena. Demonstrating that electric and magnetic fields propagate as waves through space at the speed of light, he established Laws and equations that solidified the importance of classical electromagnetism and laid the foundation for quantum mechanics and relativity in the next century.

William Clerk Maxwell.

See Part 3 here.