James Clerk Maxwell was born on June 13, 1831 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, John Clerk Maxwell took the name Maxwell upon the inheritance of a Middlebie estate belonging to the noble Maxwell family. His mother was Frances Cay. Maxwell was inquisitive and intelligent from an early age. His mother recognized this and encouraged his education. She died in 1839 from abdominal cancer and from then on, John Maxwell and Jane, his sister-in-law supervised his education.
Maxwell attended the Edinburgh Academy. He did not fit in well, but continued to show an aptitude for math and science. He wrote a mathematical paper, Oval Curves, when he was only 14. James Forbes, a professor at Edinburgh University presented it at the Royal Society. At the age of 16, Maxwell left the Academy for the University. He could have gone on to Cambridge, but chose to complete his studies in Edinburgh. During this time, he worked on the polarization of light and refraction.
In 1850, Maxwell left Edinburgh for Cambridge. He attended Trinity College in hopes of achieving a fellowship. It was at Cambridge that Maxwell did some of his most important work. He developed the electromagnetic theory by combining all previous work into a consistent theory. The equations that came from this are called Maxwell’s equations. The work was important for synthesizing earlier work and for demonstrating that light, electric fields, and magnetic fields are all the same thing. Leaving Cambridge in 1856, Maxwell accepted the position of chair of natural philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen. During his tenure there, Maxwell won the Adams prize from St John’s College, Cambridge, for proving that Saturn’s rings must be made of small objects orbiting individually. No one else who attempted the prize could even come close to proving anything about the rings.
He also married Katherine Mary Dewar while at Aberdeen. In 1860, Maxwell was laid off when Marischal College merged with King’s College to make Aberdeen University. He was offered and took the position of natural philosophy chair at King’s College London soon after. During his time in London, he became a member of the Royal Society, made the first color photograph, worked on viscosity of gases, and developed dimensional analysis. In 1871, Maxwell became the Cavendish professor of physics at Cambridge and helped to develop the Cavendish laboratory. He died in Cambridge on November 5, 1879 of abdominal cancer. He was only 48.
Image: James Clerk Maxwell. |