Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

…In his three papers, On Faraday's Lines of Force (1856), On the Physical Lines of Force (1861-62), and The Dynamical Theory of Electromagnetic Fields (1864), he derived the fundamental equations of the electromagnetic field, now called Maxwell's Equations, in which he proposed a new concept of displacement current, examined the possibility of electromagnetic action propagating through space, and inferred that light is an electromagnetic wave. His Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873), which compiled these results, was a milestone in the history of physics. On the other hand, his Theory of the Rings of Saturn was awarded the Adams Prize at Cambridge University in 1855, and his interest in the many small particle systems discussed in this paper led to a series of research, including the Dynamical Theory of Gases, in which he used statistical methods to discover the velocity distribution law of gas molecules (Maxwell distribution), and further derived, based on this, that the viscosity coefficient of gas is independent of density, and calculated the mean free path of the gas from the value of this coefficient. …

*Some of the terminology used in "Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…《ファラデーの力線について》(1856)，《物理的力線について》(1861‐62)，《電磁場の動力学理論》(1864)の三つの論文で，今日〈マクスウェルの方程式〉と呼ばれる電磁場の基本方程式を導出し，この中で変位電流という新しい概念を提案して電磁作用が空間を伝搬する可能性を検討し，光が電磁波であることを推論した。これらの成果を集大成した《電磁気学Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism》(1873)は物理学史上の画期を成した。　一方，《土星の環の理論》はケンブリッジ大学の1855年のアダムズ賞を受賞した論文であるが，この中で扱った多数の微粒子系に対する関心から《気体の動力学理論》をはじめとする一連の研究を展開，統計的な手法を使って気体分子の速度分布則(マクスウェル分布)を見いだし，さらにこれを基礎に気体の粘性係数が密度に依存しないことを導き，この係数の値から気体の平均自由行路を算出した。…

※「《Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism》」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

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