Charles K. Kao—father of fiber optics

A coaxial cable consists of a central copper conductor used for transmitting signals, followed by an insulator shield, a metallic braided mesh that prevents signal interference, and a plastic layer that encases the entire assembly.
In the simplest form, a coaxial cable can be represented by two long hollow concentric cylinders in which the current flows in opposite directions. The magnetic field inside and outside the coaxial cable is determined by using Ampère's law. The magnetic field inside...

The nature of light has been a subject of inquiry since antiquity. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton performed experiments with lenses and prisms and was able to demonstrate that white light consists of the individual colors of the rainbow combined together. Newton explained his optics findings in terms of a "corpuscular" view of light, in which light was composed of streams of extremely tiny particles traveling at high speeds according to Newton's laws of motion.

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) was one of the major contributors to physics in the nineteenth century. Although he died young, he made major contributions to the development of the kinetic theory of gases, to the understanding of color vision, and to understanding the nature of Saturn's rings. He is probably best known for having combined existing knowledge on the laws of electricity and magnetism with his insights into a complete overarching electromagnetic theory, which is represented by...