Maxwell was able to take Faraday�s drawings seriously, he took Faraday�s original idea that electricity can be turned into magnetism, and expanded it into the first full explanation that Galileo and Roemer were never able to comprehend. Maxwell concluded that light was another type of this back and forth movement. When a light beam starts going forward it produces a little bit of electricity, this little bit of electricity moves forward and produces a little bit of magnetism, this magnetism powers up another surge of electricity. Maxwell concluded that light moves like a braided whip between electricity and magnetism, causing a �mutual embrace,� in Maxwell�s words. James Maxwell Clerk�s theory was that light was a form of electromagnetism. This discovery was one of the highpoints of nineteenth-century physics.
Einstein studied this work done by Maxwell and investigated further into what these skittering light waves meant. Einstein later realized that light is different from normal rays; he realized that light could only exist when a light wave is actively moving forward. Einstein brilliantly extracted this from Maxwell�s work done 40 years earlier. Einstein applied this fact that nothing in the universe can move faster than light into his theory of relativity and E=mc(2). When an object is approaching the speed of light (c) and it increases its energy (E), this will not result in an increase of speed, but instead will result in an increase of mass (m), hence the basis for Einstein�s equation for relativity E=mc(2). Just as the equation states energy can become mass, and mass can become energy, the speed of light is the conversion factor explaining how the linkage operates. [1] This is why James Clerk Maxwell was included in David Bodanis' E=mc(2) book. For more information on this book click here.