Editing Cavendish: Maxwell and The Electrical Researches of Henry Cavendish
Abstract
During the last five years of his life, 1874-79, James Clerk Maxwell was absorbed in editing the electrical researches of Henry Cavendish, performed 100 years earlier. This endeavour is often assumed to be a work of duty to the Cavendish family, and an unfortunate waste of Maxwell's time. By looking at the history of Cavendish's papers, and the editorial choices that Maxwell made, this paper questions this assumption, considering the importance of Cavendish's experiments in Maxwell's electrical programme, and the implications that he may have derived for developing a doctrine of experimental method.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1504.07437,
title = {Editing Cavendish: Maxwell and The Electrical Researches of Henry Cavendish},
author = {Isobel Falconer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.07437},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
17 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to the Proceedings of the International Conference on the History of Physics, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, September 2014 to be published by IoP publishing