Oh, I don't mean to say that undergrads finish understanding Maxwell's equations. I took about six semesters' worth of material that basically boiled down to th

Oh, I don't mean to say that undergrads finish understanding Maxwell's equations. I took about six semesters' worth of material that basically boiled down to the equations, and I came nowhere near reaching the limit. But it is true that we routinely use the equations to solve problems that were very difficult intellectual struggles for Maxwell. A big problem is that Maxwell was encumbered by his mathematics and notation - everything he did was later refactored to be more straightforward. The dev, grad, curl stuff we use today came later. We have Oliver Heaviside - a man whose name is now more famous from Cats lyrics - to thank for them.