[dwenzek]

I'm just a bit surprised that this post says nothing about Heaviside who rewrote Maxwell's equations in the form commonly used today.

According to wikipedia [1], Heaviside significantly shaped the way Maxwell's equations are understood and applied in the decades following Maxwell's death.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside

[adrian_b]

Which was not very useful.

The integral equations of Maxwell, which few know today, are much more generally applicable and actually easier to understand.

The differential equations of Heaviside are valid only when certain restrictions about continuity are true. Moreover, the meanings of curl and divergence are hard to understand otherwise than by deriving them from the integrals over curves and surfaces used in the original equations of Maxwell, which are also necessary to determine how to handle discontinuities.

The differential form of the equations looks prettier on paper due to a simpler notation, but it is less helpful for understanding and for solving practical problems than the integral form.

In my opinion, it is a serious mistake that almost all manuals show the equations of Maxwell in the Heaviside form, instead of showing them in their original form. This is one of the main reasons why they are hard to understand for many.

[lupire]

IEEE floating point is far more practical for computation than axiomatic arithmetic, but the fundamental axioms are a more intuitively enlightening description of what arithmetic is. Same with Maxwell and Heaviside. Understanding how it all fits together in fewer words makes the rules make sense. Heaviside gives meaning to Maxwells equations.