Dafty

I will not tell you of William Wallace, I will not regale you with a tale of nationalistic warlike fervour. I will tell you of a man nicknamed “Dafty”, and will regale you - just a little - with a tale of nationalistic intellectual fervour.

To be honest, I try not to be nationalistic because I feel that being so can be more harmful than helpful, but in this case I feel justified because poor old Dafty does not receive the recognition he deserves from his fellow countrymen. The nickname “Dafty” (for you non-Scots) is generally reserved for persons thought to be a little feeble-minded so our hero would not have been too happy about the boyhood name his school chums gave him.

Denigration of people whose behaviour is unusual seems to be a national characteristic of us Scots, especially among those from small towns who often have parochial and static attitudes, (this may also be true of other nations however). I well remember from my own schooldays more than one person who suffered that deprecating nickname, sometimes worse!

The unusual behaviour of this particular Dafty was to show a much higher interest than others in how things worked and the application of mathematics to the world around him. Fortunately for him and much more fortunately for us, the Edinburgh-born schoolboy grew up and the “Dafty” label rightly perished.

His name was James Clerk Maxwell, and he became one of the greatest scientists who ever lived.

In four of the greatest equations ever derived, Maxwell unified electricity, magnetism and light and was the first to realise that these were all manifestations of the same thing; we call that thing, electromagnetic radiation. Maxwell’s equations paved the way for the development of radio, TV, mobile phones and almost any electronic device you can think of. Sadly, today it is only students of physics and science in general who are aware of the tremendous contributions by Maxwell, of whom Albert Einstein once said:

“To few men in history has such an insight been vouchsafed”.

It probably never happened, but I harbour the slight hope that those who nicknamed Maxwell became aware of their folly in their lifetimes but if not, then perhaps they are rotating in their graves with egg on their faces! So I say to all you Scots; next time you settle down for a brain-numbing night of TV, spare a little thought for Dafty, who made it all possible.