Had we raised James Clerk Maxwell to the same status as his disciples Einstein and Tesla, perhaps we would know much more that we do, instead we relegated Maxwell to the dustbin of mathematics
Thank Oliver Heaviside for taking a hatchet to Maxwell’s equations written in Quaternion form, reducing the math to a mere vector calculus description. Maxwell’s 20 equations in 20 variables was reduced to Heaviside’s 4 equations in 2 variables. This partial description of the elephant is only the blind man’s interpretation of encountering a trunk, a leg, an ear in isolation—what is taught today as Maxwell’s work.
https://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0307038