James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist, c 1870s.

Copy of an engraving. James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), one of the world's greatest theoretical physicists was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating in 1854, he became a profesor first at Aberdeen (1856) and then at King's College, London (1860). He was also the first Cavendish Profesor of Physics at Cambridge University (1871). Maxwell's most important work was on the theory of electromagnetic radiation, and in 1873 he published 'A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'. He also formulated the kinetic theory of gases.