James Clerk Maxwell

The pace of electrical development makes it difficult to realize that only a century has elapsed since publication of the laws of electromagnetic action by the genial Scotsman. Maxwell is linked with Newton and Darwin — a Cambridge triumvirate who fundamentally changed the world's concepts of physical reality James clerk maxwell was born on June 13, 1831, in Edinburgh into an upper-middle-class home; his father was a practicing attorney and a descendant of the Lords Maxwell. (The year 1831 was also the year in which Faraday discovered and announced electromagnetic induction.) Maxwell spent his youth and was educated by private tutors at an estate in Scotland called Glenlair, a modest mansion house of grey stone located in wooded country about seven miles from Castle Douglas. From the age of 10 until he was 16 he attended the Edinburgh Academy. His scientific interests were awakened early; while still at the Academy, when he was only 15 years old, he prepared a paper on advanced geometry that was accepted and read by Professor Forbes before the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Later Maxwell matriculated at Edinburgh University, where he specialized in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He remained at Edinburgh from 1847 until October 1850, when he transferred to Peterhouse College, Cambridge, but switched to the university's Trinity College so that he might obtain a Fellowship in mathematics. From his position as Fellow of Trinity, he advanced to the post of professor of natural philosophy at Marischal College and the University of Aberdeen. At Trinity, Maxwell won the honors of Second Wrangler and became Second Smith's Prize Man in 1854.