James Clerk Maxwell Biography

James Clark Maxwell was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who helped shape our understanding of the modern scientific world. Maxwell was born as John Clark in Edinburgh to a wealthy and aristocratic family. He was home-schooled until the age of eight and he was then sent to the prestigious Edinburgh Academy after his mother died. He wrote and presented his first scientific paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh when he was just 14 years old, but his paper was rejected as he was believed to have been too young to have written the paper himself. At the age of 16, Maxwell attended classes at the University of Edinburgh and at 18 he presented two more papers to the Royal Society, but was again deemed too young to have written the paper, so it was presented by his tutor at the time. He then moved to Cambridge University in 1850 and graduated with a degree in mathematics, then moved to Aberdeen University where he formulated a theory on the 200-year-old question on Saturn's rings and how they remain stable without breaking up or crashing into the planet's surface. The young Maxwell solved the mystery and his theories were confirmed by the Maxwell then moved to King's College London where he produced the world's first colour photograph and experimented with electromagnetism. Through this work Maxwell laid the foundations for the modern applications of television, radio, radar and microwaves, as well as infrared technologies. He worked on telescopes and thermodynamic theories and developed many mathematical equations and theories that explained and summarised mathematical thinking at the time, which laid the foundation work for Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, as well as the quantum theory made famous by Max Planck. Maxwell died at the age of 48, but his contributions to science are considered to be equal to those of Einstein and Isaac Newton. In the Millennium Survey of the Greatest Physicists of All Time, Maxwell was voted third behind Einstein and Newton and he is seen as the scientist who most influenced the scientific thought of the 20th century.