Contribution to the Theory of Light
Maxwell spent much of his career studying what we now know as radio waves. As he successfully experimented with radio waves, making him someone sometimes referred to as the "father of technology" (due to the radio waves importance in modern day televisions, cars and most other advanced technological devices), Maxwell often used light as a source of comparison with electromagnetic waves. He notably did this in theorizing that the speed of light, mirrored that of the speed of electromagnetic waves. Not only did Maxwell conduct this level of thought on light, suggesting that he believed it to travel in a wave like form to parallel that of the electromagnet wave, but James Clerk Maxwell also experimented with color and its creation through light. After observing different colored light mixing to form the same colors it does when mixed in paint, he conducted an experiment using a device of his construction referred to as a "color box" that used prisms to manipulate light. He was therefore able to theorize and come to understand our current stance on how color is created, through the absorption and reflection of light.
But in the heavens we discover by their light, and by their light alone, stars so distant from each other that no material thing can ever have passed from one to another; and yet this light, which is to us the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds, tells us also that each of them is built up of molecules of the same kinds as those which we find on earth.
I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.
Other Notable Scientific Contributions:
- Was a key proponent in the initial creation of color photography, in 1861 he saw the manifestation of the first color photograpH - this relied on some of the knowledge he had gained as a result of his work with light and color, as the production of the photograph relies on the layering of different colored screens
- Like, Huygens, studied Saturn's rings - he theorized they were made up of dust
- Studied Molecular Movement in gases (the Kinetic theory)