Andrea Galvani’s neon sculpture The Totality of Electromagnetic Phenomena [Maxwell’s Equations] was designed to illuminate an entire architecture. Like a Japanese byōbu, it separates the room, a screen of light that describes light itself.

Our lives are literally held together by electromagnetic waves, which speed past and through us all the time unseen, across an omnipresent electromagnetic field. We are able to see them, create them, shape them, and control them because of the mathematical tools fashioned by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) in the form of these four equations. Maxwell’s equations offer a complete characterization of electromagnetic phenomena. His calculations show that electromagnetic energy functions as a wave, like light: bending, reflecting, refracting, polarizing. Not only do they behave similarly, light and electromagnetic waves propagate at the same fixed speed. Maybe, Maxwell thought, they’re actually one and the same. Light, he proposed in 1862, is just one particular form of electromagnetic radiation operating at specific frequencies. Maxwell’s theory is both scientifically powerful and extremely useful. His equations provide a structural foundation for our modern lives: human vision; medicine; electronic equipment including telephones, television, radio, radar, microwaves, and wireless communication all draw upon electromagnetic radiation— they make use of Maxwell’s equations, and serve as a testament to his accuracy and precision. Maxwell’s theory is purely mathematical, offering a dramatic illustration of the ways in which math enables us to see the unseen.