Maxwell had studied and commented on the field of electricity and magnetism as early as 1855/56 when "On Faraday's Lines of Force"[2] was read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
Because of this, it is considered one of the most historically significant publications in physics and science in general, comparable with Einstein's Annus Mirabilis papers and Newton's Principia Mathematica.
Maxwell used this ratio in Isaac Newton's equation for the speed of sound, as applied using the density and transverse elasticity of his sea of molecular vortices.
Heaviside however presented these equations in modern vector format using the nabla operator (∇) devised by William Rowan Hamilton in 1837,[citation needed] Of Maxwell's work, Albert Einstein wrote:[4] "Imagine [Maxwell's] feelings when the differential equations he had formulated proved to him that electromagnetic fields spread in the form of polarised waves, and at the speed of light!
To few men in the world has such an experience been vouchsafed... it took physicists some decades to grasp the full significance of Maxwell's discovery, so bold was the leap that his genius forced upon the conceptions of his fellow-workers.