James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Scottish physicist, widely
considered by twentieth and twenty-first century physicists to
have been one of the most significant figures of the nineteenth
century. His work fundamentally changed conceptions of
electromagnetism and introduced the basis of field theory. He is
also known for his work on thermodynamics and the kinetic theory
of gases. James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh on June 13th
1831, into a modestly wealthy Scottish family. (Maxwell was the
family name which his father was required to adopt, by the terms
of a legal entailment, in order to inherit the estate). As a
child, Maxwell was enrolled in the Edinburgh Academy. It was
here that he met Peter Guthrie Tait (1831-1901), a contemporary
who pursued a very similar career to Maxwell's own, and who
became a life-long friend. Tait later recalled that as a
schoolboy Maxwell spent his free time 'drawing curious diagrams
and making rude mechanical models'.1 These pursuits contributed
to Maxwell's rather uncompl