#scientist.

November 5th 1879 saw the death of Edinburgh-born mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell.

James Clerk Maxwell was born June 13th, 1831 at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, a house built for his father in that part of Edinburgh's elegant Georgian New Town.

 Maxwell is not nearly so well known to the general public as Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, yet he is consistently ranked with those two when scientists generate their own  lists of the world's greatest physicists. Einstein himself had three portraits in his own study – of Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell – and he claimed that Maxwell was the most profound physicist since Newton (modestly omitting himself).

Although the family moved to their estate at Glenlair, near Dumfries, shortly afterwards, James returned to Edinburgh to attend school at The Edinburgh Academy.  He continued his education at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge.  In 1856, at the early age of 25, he became Professor of Physics at Marischal College, Aberdeen. From there he moved first to King's College, London, and then, in 1871, to become the first Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge where he directed the newly created Cavendish Laboratory.  It was at the Cavendish, over the next fifty years, that so much of the physics of today continued to develop from Maxwell's inspiration.

As I mentioned earlier, Albert Einstein said: "The special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field. Since Maxwell's time, physical reality has been thought of as represented by continuous fields, and not capable of any mechanical interpretation.  This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton" So much of our technology in the world today stems from his grasp of basic principles of the universe.  Wide ranging developments in the field of electricity and electronics, including radio, television, radar and communications, derive from Maxwell's discovery - which was not a synthesis of what was known before, but rather a fundamental change in concept that departed from Newton's view and was to influence greatly the modern scientific and industrial revolution.

Henry Duncan Littlejohn was born in Edinburgh on May 8th 1826, Littlejohn is one of two Edinburgh men that are quoted as being an influence in Arthur Conan Doyle’s formation of the character Sherlock Homes.

Henry was educated in Perth before The Royal High school and the Edinburgh University studying medicine and  graduating with distinction in 1847.

It’s quite a topical post given that Henry Littlejohn, whose appointment as the first Medical Officer of Health for Edinburgh was the first appointment of its kind in Scotland. He pioneered compulsory notification of infectious disease in Edinburgh leading to the introduction of such notification throughoutt Britain. The resultant mapping of diseases allowed active prevention and led to significant reduction in mortality during the 50 years of his office. He also achieved distinction in Forensic Medicine as an expert Crown witness for most of the major Scottish trials in the latter half of the 19th century.

Eloquent and erudite, he was regarded as an outstanding teacher amidst Edinburgh contemporaries who included some of the greatest medical teachers in the world.

In 1879 due to his influence a clause was included in the local Police Act requiring such notification giving Edinburgh the lead to the whole of Great Britain. This was to prove one of the major advances in public health of the 19th century. His “Report on the Sanitary Condition of the City of Edinburgh” proved a blueprint for social reform. It clearly demonstrated the effect of population density on the spread of disease and mortality. He was able to define the incidence of dip patients throughout the city and demonstrated a clear correlation between deprivation, disease and mortality. His proposals to improve this included recommendations about building, sewage, water pollution and limiting overcrowding. The Town Council were responsive to his recommendations and demolished many aging properties which had become dangers to health.

By the time of his retiral in 1908, after 46 years of service, mortality rates in Edinburgh from infectious disease had halved. Largely as a result of his efforts cholera and typhus had disappeared and smallpox had become a rarity. The other inspiration I mentioned earlier, for Sherlock Holmes gets a mention here in this article about both him and Liltlejohn   

On June 3rd 1726 James Hutton, the chemist and geologist, was born.

I was busy yesterday getting drunk so playing catch up a wee bit.

James Hutton transformed our concepts of the earth and the universe by deciphering the message carried by common rocks.

He discovered that our planet is enormously older than people believed. He gathered evidence with his own eyes rather than relying on what ‘everyone knows’ or the written word. Prior to his work it was generally accepted in the West that the earth was about 6,000 years old, based on a literal interpretation of the Bible’s timescale.

Hutton devised one of geology’s fundamental principles – uniformitarianism – which says that the same natural processes we see operating today are the ones that have always operated, and that these everyday natural processes have shaped our world.

Other theories that require an immense amount of time – such as evolution by natural selection and continental drift – would not have been credible without Hutton’s work.

On December 17th 1907 William Thomson, Lord Kelvin died.

Although born in Belfast, Thomson was brought up in Scotland, his father was Professor of Mathematics at Glasgow University and his son took lesson there from the age of ten.

Kelvin attended university classes from the age of 10. He wrote his first scientific paper, under the pseudonym ‘PQR’, aged only 16.

In his teens he learned French well enough to read the work of eminent French mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier. Philip Kelland, Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University, had criticised Fourier’s work on the theory of heat. Kelvin boldly stated that Kelland was wrong – and later scientists agreed with him.

From 1841 to 1845 Kelvin attended Cambridge University. He was an excellent student – although he shocked his father by spending his allowance on a boat.

After graduating, Kelvin worked in a Paris laboratory with physics professor Victor Regnault.

Kelvin was influenced by the mathematical ideas of George Green, a self-taught miller’s son from Nottingham.

He later brought an essay of Green’s to the attention of fellow mathematicians and physicists by republishing it in a respected scientific journal. Until then the essay on mathematical analysis, electricity and magnetism had gone largely unnoticed.

In 1846, aged only 22, Kelvin returned to Glasgow to become Professor of Natural Philosophy. He remained in this post for 53 years. Keen to see students involved in practical experiment, he established what became the first university physics laboratory.

Kelvin continued to study the nature of heat. He realised that it would be useful to be able to define extremely low temperatures precisely. In 1848, he proposed an absolute temperature scale, now called The Kelvin Scale.

After further research, Kelvin formulated the second law of thermodynamics. This states that heat will not flow from a colder to a hotter body.

His interest in the transmission of electricity prompted Kelvin’s appointment as Director of the Atlantic Telegraph Company in 1856.

The company was to install a cable under the Atlantic Ocean. Atlantic Cable Expeditions in 1857, 1858 and 1865 failed, but communication by cable finally succeeded in 1866.

Kelvin received a knighthood for his efforts in this project.

From 1870 onwards, Kelvin spent many summers on his yacht 'Lalla Rookh’, and invented several marine instruments to improve navigation and safety. He introduced a mariner’s compass more accurate than any other in existence, and a machine to predict tide levels worldwide.

In 1884 Kelvin travelled to the United States to give a series of lectures. These were enthusiastically received, and were published in 1904 as the 'Baltimore Lectures’.

Kelvin became a Lord in 1892 and took the name Kelvin because of his Glasgow connections. By the time of his death in 1907, he was an international celebrity, widely respected and honoured.

On 22nd February 1875 Sir Charles Lyell, eminent Scots Geologist, died.

Charles Lyell was born at Kinnordy, Angus 1797, he began his career as a lawyer, but later changed to geology. His background in zoology and the physical sciences allowed his research to cover more of a scientific scope. He believed that creation of the earth was not based on the interpretation of Genesis, but on the basis of scientific explanations. He sought a scientific knowledge of the formation of the mountains.

Lyell was also a Darwinist, and wrote of his observations in The Geological Evidence for the Antiquity of Man in 1863. Later, when he visited the Alps, he saw recognizable similarities in rocks of the Alps and Appenines. Both were made up of tertiary, uplifting rock strata.

Through his experiments on these two mountain ranges, he was able to identify the positions of the earliest seas and gulfs. He studied the glacial movements in mountains, like the Mere De Glace on Mont Blanc in the Alps, searching for a way to identify how exactly mountains were cut and formed. He also theorized a future “convulsion” that would make a new mountain range in Europe, east of the Alps.

Lyall’s greatest work was done on his Theory of Uniformism, based on his attempts to date the Alps: “Although we have not yet ascertained the number of different periods at which the Alps gained accessions to their height and width, we can affirm, that the last series of movements occurred when the seas were inhabited by many existing species of animals” (from Principles of Geology, 1863).

Uniformism meant that all of the processes in which the physical world changed in the past are also changing the physical world presently. Lyell’s theory was counter to many theories on catastrophism, which were based on the idea that the physical world was changed due to catastrophic events, like a flood, or an earthquake.

Of course all this made him quite unpopular amongst the then devout majority who believed the bible in it’s entirety, it’s remarkable that some still believe this version of events!  

Although Darwin’s theories of evolution had it’s basis in some of Lyell’s work, the Scot had trouble accepting “the descent of man from the brutes,” He simply could not, as he put it, “go the whole Orang.” So although his Uniformism theories brought him condemnation from the church, he still had some sort of Faith that stopped him believing Darwin’s theories.