He was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Henry Samuel Close, a well-known lawyer whose family came from Drumbanagher in County Armagh.
On the death of his father in 1861 he returned to Dublin, and while giving his services to various churches in the city, devoted himself almost wholly to literary and scientific pursuits, and especially to the glacial geology of Ireland, on which subject he became an acknowledged authority.
Later on he discussed the origin of the elevated shell-bearing gravels near Dublin and expressed the view that they were accumulated by floating ice when the land had undergone submergence.
[1] In 1872 George H Kinahan and Maxwell Close published jointly an important paper entitled The Glaciation of Iar-Connaught and its Neighbourhood in the Counties of Galway and Mayo.
It was a private publication, accompanied by a large map showing the pattern of striae over Connemara and south County Mayo.