Maxwellisation

Meanings

1. The property of exhibiting a Maxwellian distribution (or Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution), especially as regards the speed of a particle.
2. A process whereby a person criticized in an official inquiry is given an opportunity to read and respond to the criticisms before the report of the inquiry is published.

Etymology

From Maxwell + -isation (suffix forming nouns denoting the act, process, or result of doing something). Sense 1 is named after the Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) who first formulated what is now called the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, a probability distribution originally used for describing particle speeds in idealized gases, in 1860. Sense 2 is named after the British media proprietor and fraudster Robert Maxwell (1923–1991) who brought a court case in respect of a 1969 British government report that was critical of his conduct. The Court of Appeal of England and Wales held that he should have been shown the draft final conclusions of the inquiry so that he could respond to them.