[5] The unification of light and electrical phenomena led to his prediction of the existence of radio waves, and the paper contained his final version of his equations, which he had been working on since 1856.

[6] As a result of his equations, and other contributions such as introducing an effective method to deal with network problems and linear conductors, he is regarded as a founder of the modern field of electrical engineering.

Maxwell was the first to derive the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, a statistical means of describing aspects of the kinetic theory of gases, which he worked on sporadically throughout his career.

[27] James was a first cousin of both the artist Jemima Blackburn[31] (the daughter of his father's sister) and the civil engineer William Dyce Cay (the son of his mother's brother).

"[37] 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: He is a very happy man, and has improved much since the weather got moderate; he has great work with doors, locks, keys, etc., and "show me how it doos" is never out of his mouth.

He also investigates the hidden course of streams and bell-wires, the way the water gets from the pond through the wall....[38]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.

James' father took him to Robert Davidson's demonstration of electric propulsion and magnetic force on 12 February 1842, an experience with profound implications for the boy.

[45] 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.

[52] There he would experiment with improvised chemical, electric, and magnetic apparatus; however, his chief concerns regarded the properties of polarised light.

[53] 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.

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.

But there are extensive and important tracts in the territory of the Scoffer, the Pantheist, the Quietist, Formalist, Dogmatist, Sensualist, and the rest, which are openly and solemnly Tabooed.

[68] Maxwell was made a fellow of Trinity on 10 October 1855, sooner than was the norm,[68] and was asked to prepare lectures on hydrostatics and optics and to set examination papers.

[69] The following February he was urged by Forbes to apply for the newly vacant Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen.

[72] He lived in Aberdeen with his cousin William Dyce Cay, a Scottish civil engineer, during the six months of the academic year and spent the summers at Glenlair, which he had inherited from his father.

[30] Later, his former student described Maxwell as follows: In the late 1850s shortly before 9 am any winter’s morning you might well have seen the young James Clerk Maxwell, in his mid to late 20s, a man of middling height, with frame strongly knit, and a certain spring and elasticity in his gait; dressed for comfortable ease rather than elegance; a face expressive at once of sagacity and good humour, but overlaid with a deep shade of thoughtfulness; features boldly put pleasingly marked; eyes dark and glowing; hair and beard perfectly black, and forming a strong contrast to the pallor of his complexion.

[75] Maxwell was awarded the £130 Adams Prize in 1859 for his essay "On the stability of the motion of Saturn's rings";[76] he was the only entrant to have made enough headway to submit an entry.

"[78] 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.

[83] 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".

[88] 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.

[95] 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.

He had gauged and fathomed all the schemes and systems of philosophy, and had found them utterly empty and unsatisfying—"unworkable" was his own word about them—and he turned with simple faith to the Gospel of the Saviour.As death approached Maxwell told a Cambridge colleague,[60] I have been thinking how very gently I have always been dealt with.

The only desire which I can have is like David to serve my own generation by the will of God, and then fall asleep.Maxwell is buried at Parton Kirk, near Castle Douglas in Galloway close to where he grew up.

[101] The extended biography The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, by his former schoolfellow and lifelong friend Professor Lewis Campbell, was published in 1882.

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.

[115] Maxwell had studied and commented on electricity and magnetism as early as 1855 when his paper "On Faraday's lines of force" was read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

He considered this to be more than just a coincidence, commenting, "We can scarcely avoid the conclusion that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

The result was the realization that there was no need for the greater physical insights provided by quaternions if the theory was purely local, and vector analysis became commonplace.

In the course of his 1855 paper, Maxwell proposed that, if three black-and-white photographs of a scene were taken through red, green, and blue filters, and transparent prints of the images were projected onto a screen using three projectors equipped with similar filters, when superimposed on the screen the result would be perceived by the human eye as a complete reproduction of all the colours in the scene.

Originating with Daniel Bernoulli, this theory was advanced by the successive labours of John Herapath, John James Waterston, James Joule, and particularly Rudolf Clausius, to such an extent as to put its general accuracy beyond a doubt; but it received enormous development from Maxwell, who in this field appeared as an experimenter (on the laws of gaseous friction) as well as a mathematician.