Early life, 1831–1839 . James Clerk Maxwell was born on 13 June 1831 at 14 India Street,
Edinburgh, to
John Clerk Maxwell of Middlebie, an advocate, and Frances Cay, daughter of
Robert Hodshon Cay and sister of
John Cay. (His birthplace now houses a museum operated by the
James Clerk Maxwell Foundation.) His father was a man of comfortable means of the Clerk family of
Penicuik, holders of the
baronetcy of
Clerk of Penicuik. His father's brother was the
6th baronet. He had been born "John Clerk", adding "Maxwell" to his own after he inherited (as an infant in 1793) the Middlebie estate, a Maxwell property in
Dumfriesshire. (the daughter of his father's sister) and the civil engineer
William Dyce Cay (the son of his mother's brother). Cay and Maxwell were close friends and Cay acted as his best man when Maxwell married. Maxwell's parents met and married when they were well into their thirties; his mother was nearly 40 when he was born. They had had one earlier child, a daughter named Elizabeth, who died in infancy. When Maxwell was young his family moved to
Glenlair, in Kirkcudbrightshire, which his parents had built on the estate which comprised . All indications suggest that Maxwell had maintained an unquenchable curiosity from an early age. By the age of three, everything that moved, shone, or made a noise drew the question: "what's the go o' that?". In a passage added to a letter from his father to his sister-in-law Jane Cay in 1834, his mother described this innate sense of inquisitiveness:
Education, 1839–1847 Recognising the boy's potential, Maxwell's mother Frances took responsibility for his early education, which in the
Victorian era was largely the job of the woman of the house. His formal schooling began unsuccessfully under the guidance of a 16-year-old hired tutor. Little is known about the young man hired to instruct Maxwell, except that he treated the younger boy harshly, chiding him for being slow and wayward. In 1841, at age ten, Maxwell was sent to the prestigious
Edinburgh Academy. He lodged during term times at the house of his aunt Isabella. During this time his passion for drawing was encouraged by his older cousin Jemima. The young Maxwell, having been raised in isolation on his father's countryside estate, did not fit in well at school. The first year had been full, obliging him to join the second year with classmates a year his senior. He never seemed to resent the epithet, bearing it without complaint for many years. Social isolation at the Academy ended when he met
Lewis Campbell and
Peter Guthrie Tait, two boys of a similar age who were to become notable scholars later in life. They remained lifelong friends. Maxwell's interests ranged far beyond the school syllabus and he did not pay particular attention to examination performance. was presented to the
Royal Society of Edinburgh by
James Forbes, a professor of
natural philosophy at the
University of Edinburgh, because Maxwell was deemed too young to present the work himself. The work was not entirely original, since
René Descartes had also examined the properties of such
multifocal ellipses in the 17th century, but Maxwell had simplified their construction. He had the opportunity to attend the
University of Cambridge, but decided, after his first term, to complete the full course of his undergraduate studies at Edinburgh. The academic staff of the university included some highly regarded names; his first-year tutors included
Sir William Hamilton, who lectured him on
logic and
metaphysics,
Philip Kelland on mathematics, and
James Forbes on
natural philosophy. and was, therefore, able to immerse himself in private study during free time at the university and particularly when back home at Glenlair. There he would experiment with improvised chemical, electric, and magnetic apparatus; however, his chief concerns regarded the properties of
polarised light. He constructed shaped blocks of
gelatine, subjected them to various
stresses, and with a pair of
polarising prisms given to him by
William Nicol, viewed the coloured fringes that had developed within the jelly. Through this practice he discovered
photoelasticity, which is a means of determining the stress distribution within physical structures. At age 18, Maxwell contributed two papers for the
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. One of these, "On the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids", laid the foundation for an important discovery later in his life, which was the temporary
double refraction produced in
viscous liquids by
shear stress. His other paper was "Rolling Curves" and, just as with the paper "Oval Curves" that he had written at the Edinburgh Academy, he was again considered too young to stand at the rostrum to present it himself. The paper was delivered to the Royal Society by his tutor Kelland instead.
University of Cambridge, 1850–1856 , holding one of his
colour wheels In October 1850, already an accomplished mathematician, Maxwell left Scotland for the
University of Cambridge. He initially attended
Peterhouse, but before the end of his first term transferred to
Trinity, where he believed it would be easier to obtain a
fellowship. At Trinity he was elected to the elite secret society known as the
Cambridge Apostles. Maxwell's intellectual understanding of his Christian faith and of science grew rapidly during his Cambridge years. He joined the "Apostles", an exclusive debating society of the intellectual elite, where through his essays he sought to work out this understanding. In the summer of his third year, Maxwell spent some time at the
Suffolk home of the Rev.
C. B. Tayler, the uncle of a classmate, G. W. H. Tayler. The love of God shown by the family impressed Maxwell, particularly after he was nursed back from ill health by the minister and his wife. On his return to Cambridge, Maxwell writes to his recent host a chatty and affectionate letter including the following testimony, In 1854, Maxwell graduated from Trinity with a degree in mathematics. He scored second highest in the final examination, coming behind
Edward Routh and earning himself the title of Second Wrangler. He was later declared equal with Routh in the more exacting ordeal of the
Smith's Prize examination. Immediately after earning his degree, Maxwell read his paper "On the Transformation of Surfaces by Bending" to the
Cambridge Philosophical Society. This is one of the few purely mathematical papers he had written, demonstrating his growing stature as a mathematician. Maxwell decided to remain at Trinity after graduating and applied for a fellowship, which was a process that he could expect to take a couple of years. Buoyed by his success as a research student, he would be free, apart from some tutoring and examining duties, to pursue scientific interests at his own leisure. With the coloured
spinning tops invented by Forbes, Maxwell was able to demonstrate that white light would result from a mixture of red, green, and blue light. Maxwell was this time able to deliver it himself. The following February he was urged by Forbes to apply for the newly vacant
Chair of Natural Philosophy at
Marischal College,
Aberdeen. His father assisted him in the task of preparing the necessary references, but died on 2 April at Glenlair before either knew the result of Maxwell's candidacy. He committed himself to lecturing 15 hours a week, including a weekly
pro bono lecture to the local working men's college. He focused his attention on a problem that had eluded scientists for 200 years: the nature of
Saturn's rings. It was unknown how they could remain stable without breaking up, drifting away or crashing into Saturn. The problem took on a particular resonance at that time because
St John's College, Cambridge, had chosen it as the topic for the 1857
Adams Prize. Maxwell devoted two years to studying the problem, proving that a regular solid ring could not be stable, while a fluid ring would be forced by wave action to break up into blobs. Since neither was observed, he concluded that the rings must be composed of numerous small particles he called "brick-bats", each independently orbiting Saturn. he was the only entrant to have made enough headway to submit an entry. His work was so detailed and convincing that when
George Biddell Airy read it he commented, "It is one of the most remarkable applications of mathematics to physics that I have ever seen." It was considered the final word on the issue until direct observations by the
Voyager flybys of the 1980s confirmed Maxwell's prediction that the rings were composed of particles. It is now understood, however, that the rings' particles are not totally stable, being pulled by gravity onto Saturn. The rings are expected to vanish entirely over the next 300 million years. In 1857 Maxwell befriended the Reverend
Daniel Dewar, who was then the Principal of Marischal. Through him Maxwell met Dewar's daughter,
Katherine Mary Dewar. They were engaged in February 1858 and married in Aberdeen on 2 June 1858. On the marriage record, Maxwell is listed as Professor of Natural Philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen. Katherine was seven years Maxwell's senior. Comparatively little is known of her, although it is known that she helped in his lab and worked on experiments in
viscosity. Maxwell's biographer and friend, Lewis Campbell, adopted an uncharacteristic reticence on the subject of Katherine, though describing their married life as "one of unexampled devotion". In 1860 Marischal College merged with the neighbouring
King's College to form the
University of Aberdeen. There was no room for two professors of Natural Philosophy, so Maxwell, despite his scientific reputation, found himself laid off. He was unsuccessful in applying for Forbes's recently vacated chair at Edinburgh, the post instead going to
Tait. Maxwell was granted the Chair of Natural Philosophy at
King's College, London, instead. After recovering from a near-fatal bout of
smallpox in 1860, he moved to London with his wife.
King's College, London, 1860–1865 Milestone Plaques are at Maxwell's birthplace in Edinburgh and the family home at Glenlair. Maxwell's time at King's was probably the most productive of his career. He was awarded the
Royal Society's Rumford Medal in 1860 for his work on colour and was later elected to the Society in 1861. This period of his life would see him display the world's first light-fast colour photograph, further develop his ideas on the
viscosity of gases, and propose a system of defining physical quantities—now known as
dimensional analysis. Maxwell would often attend lectures at the
Royal Institution, where he came into regular contact with
Michael Faraday. The relationship between the two men could not be described as close, because Faraday was 40 years Maxwell's senior and showed signs of
senility. They nevertheless maintained a strong respect for each other's talents. This time is especially noteworthy for the advances Maxwell made in the fields of electricity and magnetism. He examined the nature of both electric and magnetic fields in his two-part paper "
On Physical Lines of Force", which was published in 1861. In it, he provided a conceptual model for
electromagnetic induction, consisting of tiny spinning cells of
magnetic flux. Two more parts were later added to and published in that same paper in early 1862. In the first additional part, he discussed the nature of
electrostatics and
displacement current. In the second additional part, he dealt with the rotation of the plane of the
polarisation of light in a magnetic field, a phenomenon that had been discovered by Faraday and is now known as the
Faraday effect.
Later years, 1865–1879 In 1865 Maxwell resigned the chair at King's College, London, and returned to Glenlair with Katherine. In his paper "On governors" (1868) he mathematically described the behaviour of
governors—devices that control the speed of steam engines—thereby establishing the theoretical basis of control engineering. In his paper "On reciprocal figures, frames and diagrams of forces" (1870) he discussed the rigidity of various designs of lattice. He wrote the textbook
Theory of Heat (1871) and the treatise
Matter and Motion (1876). Maxwell was also the first to make explicit use of
dimensional analysis, in 1871, and helped to establish the
CGS system of measurement. Maxwell has been credited as being the first to grasp the concept of
chaos, as he acknowledged the significance of systems that exhibit "sensitive dependence on initial conditions." He was also the first to emphasize the "
butterfly effect" in the 1870s in two discussions. In 1871 he returned to Cambridge to become the first
Cavendish Professor of Physics. Maxwell was put in charge of the development of the
Cavendish Laboratory, supervising every step in the progress of the building and of the purchase of the collection of apparatus. One of Maxwell's last great contributions to science was the editing (with copious original notes) of the research of
Henry Cavendish, from which it appeared that Cavendish researched, amongst other things, such questions as the
density of the Earth and the composition of water. He was elected as a member to the
American Philosophical Society in 1876.
Death In April 1879 Maxwell began to have difficulty in swallowing, the first symptom of his fatal illness. Maxwell died in Cambridge of abdominal cancer on 5 November 1879 at the age of 48. The minister who regularly visited him in his last weeks was astonished at his lucidity and the immense power and scope of his memory, but comments more particularly, As death approached Maxwell told a Cambridge colleague, The extended biography
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, by his former schoolfellow and lifelong friend Professor
Lewis Campbell, was published in 1882. His collected works were issued in two volumes by the
Cambridge University Press in 1890. The executors of Maxwell's estate were his physician
George Edward Paget,
G. G. Stokes, and Colin Mackenzie, who was Maxwell's cousin. Overburdened with work, Stokes passed Maxwell's papers to
William Garnett, who had effective custody of the papers until about 1884. There is a memorial inscription to him near the choir screen at
Westminster Abbey.
Personal life As a great lover of
Scottish poetry, Maxwell memorised poems and wrote his own. The best known is
Rigid Body Sings, closely based on "
Comin' Through the Rye" by
Robert Burns, which he apparently used to sing while accompanying himself on a guitar. It has the opening lines A collection of his poems was published by his friend
Lewis Campbell in 1882. Descriptions of Maxwell remark upon his remarkable intellectual qualities being matched by social awkwardness. Maxwell wrote the following aphorism for his own conduct as a scientist: He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair, not to-morrow's, lest he become a visionary—not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work, nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his action. Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life, and an embodiment of the work of eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises, because the present is given him for a possession. Maxwell was an evangelical
Presbyterian and in his later years became an
Elder of the
Church of Scotland. Maxwell's religious beliefs and related activities have been the focus of a number of papers. Attending both Church of Scotland (his father's denomination) and
Episcopalian (his mother's denomination) services as a child, Maxwell underwent an
evangelical conversion in April 1853. One facet of this conversion may have aligned him with an
antipositivist position. ==Scientific legacy==