James Clerk Maxwell

When James Clerk Maxwell arrived at Marischal College in 1856 to take up the post of Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics), he was only 25 years old. He would go on to

become one of the world’s greatest scientists laying the foundation for the era of modern physics. Albert Einstein described James’s work as the “most profound and the

most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton”.

James’s five years at Aberdeen were among the most innovative and important periods of his life. During this time he won the prestigious Adams Prize for his work on the motion and composition of Saturn’s rings, a topic which had baffled scientists for 200 years. It was not until the 1980s that Voyager space probes ventured into space and confirmed

James’s theory to be correct. Much of his ground-breaking work on the theory of colours – which demonstrated that all colours could be produced by different combinations of the three primary lights: red, green and blue – was also conducted at Aberdeen.

Today we owe a great deal to James Clerk Maxwell, not least for his electromagnetic theory which forms the basis for much of our modern technology. Radio, television, satellite communications and mobile phones all have their origins in his work.