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Now, since the time of Newton there had been a debate about whether light was a wave---that is, a traveling disturbance in some background medium---or a particle, which travels regardless of the presence of a background medium. The observation of Maxwell that electromagnetic waves must exist and that their speed was identical to that of light ended the debate: light was an electromagnetic wave.
--
The Physics of Star Trek, HarperPerennial edition (1996), p. 17.

 

Lawrence M. Krauss

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The general equations are next applied to the case of a magnetic disturbance propagated through a non-conductive field, and it is shown that the only disturbances which can be so propagated are those which are transverse to the direction of propagation, and that the velocity of propagation is the velocity v, found from experiments such as those of Weber, which expresses the number of electrostatic units of electricity which are contained in one electromagnetic unit. This velocity is so nearly that of light, that it seems we have strong reason to conclude that light itself (including radiant heat, and other radiations if any) is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws.

 

James Clerk Maxwell

 

The way that the background fields generates mass is rather like the way in which when light passes through a transparent medium like glass or water, it gets slowed down. It no longer travels with the fundamental velocity of light c. And that's the way to think of the generation of mass.

 

Peter Higgs

 

Now, the velocity of wave propagation can be seen, without the aid of any mathematical analysis, to depend on the elasticity of the medium and its density; for we can see that if a medium is highly elastic the disturbance would be propagated at a great speed.

 

Albert Abraham Michelson

 

One thing leads to another, and soon you are searching for answers to basic questions.
Another time during lectures on Classical Logic, we were introduced to an “experimentum crucis”. It was illustrated by the deciding experiment of Fizeau on the speed of light in water as compared to its speed in air. Since wave theory predicts that speed in water is less, and corpuscular theory (with point particles) predicts it would be faster, this is supposed to have selected the wave theory is correct. But then how would one accommodate the photoelectric effect? Then it turns out that if the “corpuscle” of light had a finite size, corpuscular theory also predicts lower speed of light in water. But then one can ask how come photoelectric emission being prompt even in feeble light, how could the energy of a photon spread over ?(?/2)2 act as a whole and liberate a single photoelectron! This leads us to question the square of the amplitude being interpreted as the probability of the particle being formed in the immediate vicinity. How do probabilities enter quantum mechanics? Thus the questions (and the quest) go on.

 

George Sudarshan

 

The more I learn about light the more I realize, man, we don't know anything about light... It's just bizarre... a particle has it's own proper time which slows down as you speed up. But at the speed of light... there's no time. That's bizarre ... that we can, right now, as you know, see — interact with the light that has come from the birth of the universe. So ... from our point of view, that light traveled for 14 billion years but from the point of view of the light it's the moment of creation.

 

Brian Swimme