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<\/p>\nThe first color photograph.<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n
And is that not a thing of rare beauty?<\/p>\n
As one educated as an engineer, I note that popular adulation of engineers is limited, as with physicists, to one or two men known to all. Brunel<\/a>, Stephenson, Edison, von Braun, Wozniak. But for me the greatest engineer will always be the Englishman Michael Faraday<\/a> for, had he not ruminated on magnetic induction, we would have a world without the electric motor, the same one that focuses the lens in your digital camera. And one James Clerk Maxwell would not have developed his theories of electromagnetism had not Faraday, perhaps the greatest experimenter ever, and one who made Edison look like a piker, led the way with his work. A rare case of engineering showing mathematics and physics the way. Faraday was, by 40 years, Maxwell’s senior ….<\/p>\n In our society which adulates divas who cannot tell pitch from tar and thinks Beethoven was a dog in those silly movies, give a thought to these titans of intellect.<\/p>\n Update:<\/b> A reader has kindly pointed me to the work of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky<\/a>, a Russian chemist who did much to further Maxwell’s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first color photographer. As a modern day physicist or mathematician, it’s no longer possible to be famous. Famous in the sense that schoolboys learn about your work and adulate your persona. As a child I was endlessly absorbed reading about the great physicists and mathematicians, and whereas most, when asked, could likely name just … Continue reading The first color picture<\/span>