James Clerk Maxwell

The theoretical physicist James Clerk Maxwell is best known for drawing previously unconnected observations, experiments, and theories into a unitary theory of electromagnetism.

Maxwell was born in 1831 in Edinburgh. After several years at the Edinburgh Academy, at the age of 16 Maxwell enrolled in the University of Edinburgh. Having supplemented his formal schooling with private study, Maxwell contributed two papers for the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh at the age of 18. One of these papers was presented to the Royal Society by proxy, as had been an earlier paper he completed at 14.

Maxwell entered Cambridge University in 1850, graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1854. He completed several more papers during his time there, and in October 1855 was made a felow of Trinity College.

At the age of 25, Maxwell accepted the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen. He lost his position there in 1860, when Marischal College merged with King's College. He moved to King's College London, during which he was awarded the Royal Society's Rumford medal (1860), became a member of the Society (1861), created the first colored photograph, and published papers on electromagnetic induction, electrostatis, displacement current, and the polarization of light in a magnetic field. In 1864 he wrote A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, in which he first proposed that light took the form of waves through the same medium responsible for electric and magnetic phenomena.

Maxwell retired from King's College in 1865, and moved back to his family's country house in Middlebie, Kirkcudbrightshire, Glenlair. There he continued his research until 1871, when he became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge. He died in 1879.