Maxwell in the News

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Just for your information, the weekend newspaper supplement PARADE features
this weekend an article on James Clerk Maxwell by Carl Sagan.  It deals
almost exclusively, though, with Maxwell's work in integrating the 
electro-magnetic field and says nothing about the Demon.  There's an
interesting sidelight to GR here, though, since Maxwell hypothesized the
notion of an "aether"--a substance in space through which electromagnetism
must be carried, since debunked by science.  But not the passage (I don't
have page at hand) in which the narrator of GR decries the notion of
space as a mere vacuum.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)