Originally Posted by Toehammer
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I didn't say Faraday > Maxwell. My original ranking (opinion) was Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, then Einstein. Maxwell was a beast, and I do believe right next to Newton. Maxwell was much more of a mathematical powerhouse than Faraday, as you mention. However even his original mathematical formulation of electrodynamics, just like Faraday's lines of force, were a bit ahead of their time, and that is why it was difficult to present them to the common scientist (even physicist). Faraday had brilliant ideas that people were sorting out after he died. Maxwell's very confusing original equations were clarified by work of Hertz, Heaviside, Lorentz, and Einstein to an extent (by using them as a basis/assumption for relativity). The way we learn the 4 vector equations today (or 1 if you know differential geometry) today don't really resemble Maxwell's originals. So just like you argue that Maxwell illuminated Faraday's confusing skull-trapped ideas, following generations sorted out Maxwell's mess as well.
It is always difficult to deconstruct the work of true geniuses, and usually requires another genius. Faraday -> Maxwell -> Hertz/Heaviside/Lorentz/Einstein. Also, the perception that prophetic scientists sometimes seem to have irrational thought processes, does not make it a fact. To call him a savant and saying he was totally lost in his own mind is a matter of opinion. According to many accounts, he was an excellent and simple orator, and demonstrated his ideas and experiments with profound clarity. I wasn't alive, so I don't know... but Maxwell even gave most of the credit to Faraday for electromagnetic theory, just as Newton acknowledged Kepler/Galileo/Descartes for his success, and despite Faraday's poorly developed mathematics, Maxwell claimed Faraday was truly a remarkable mathematician that would influence the future. Anyone who has grown up with this concept of fields, which Faraday seemed to conjure out of thin air, knows Faraday's impact on mathematics/physics. Maxwell's formulation of electrodynamics is the most important moment in the history of mankind since Newton, but it all depended on Faraday's concept of fields.
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