James Clerk Maxwell.

James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 13, 1831, to John Clerk and Frances Maxwell. His birthplace, at 15 India Street Edinburgh, is now the location of the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences. It was around the time of his birth that physicist Michael Faraday was in the process of completing his work on magnetic induction.

Maxwell grew up on his father's estate in the Scottish countryside. The young Maxwell had an unquenchable curiosity from an early age, by the time he was three, everything that moved, shone, or made a noise drew the question:

'What's the go o' that?'.

Recognizing the potential of young Maxwell, his mother, Frances, took responsibility for his early education, which in Victorian times was largely the job of the women of the house. She became ill and subsequently died in 1839. His father, John Clerk Maxwell, continued the education of his son, with the aid of his sister-in-law Jane Cay, both of whom played pivotal roles in the life of James. He was encouraged by his father to pursue his scientific and mathematical interests and in 1845, at the age of 13, he won the school's mathematical medal, and first prizes for English and English verse. In 1854, Maxwell graduated with a degree as second wrangler in mathematics from Trinity (second-highest score in the final mathematics examination) and was declared equal with the senior wrangler (highest scorer) of his year in the more exacting ordeal of the Smith's prize examination. Immediately after taking his degree, he read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society the paper he had written, 'On the Transformation of Surfaces by Bending'. This is one of the few purely mathematical papers he published, and it exhibited at once to experts the full genius of its author.
In 1856 his paper, 'On Faraday's Lines of Force' in which he translated Faraday's theories into mathematical form, presenting the lines of force as imaginary tubes containing an incompressible fluid. A considerable part of the translation of his electromagnetism equations was accomplished during Maxwell's career as an undergraduate in Trinity.

From 1855 to 1872 he published a series of valuable investigations connected with the perception of colour and colour-blindness, the instruments which he devised for these investigations were called Maxwell's Discs. They were simple and convenient to use. They were used to compare a variable mixture of three primary colours with a sample colour by observing the spinning "colour top."

In 1856, Maxwell was appointed to the chair of Natural Philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen, which he held until the fusion of Aberdeen's two colleges in 1860.

The greatest work of Maxwell's life was devoted to electricity. Maxwell's most important contribution was the extension and mathematical formulation of earlier work on electricity and magnetism by Michael Faraday, André-Marie Ampère and others into a linked set of differential equations (originally, 20 equations in 20 variables, later re-expressed in quaternion- and vector-based notations). These equations, which are now collectively known as Maxwell's equations (or occasionally, "Maxwell's Wonderful Equations"), were first presented to the Royal Society in 1864, and together describe the behaviour of both the electric and magnetic fields, as well as their interactions with matter. He also showed that an 'electromagnetic wave' (radio wave) was possible, a rapid interplay of electric and magnetic fields spreading with the velocity of light.

From this connection sprang:

The idea that light was an electric phenomenon.

The discovery of radio waves.

Einstein's theory of relativity.

and a great deal of present-day physics.

The first colour photograph

Maxwell made contributions to the area of optics and colour vision, being credited with the discovery that colour photographs could be formed using red, green, and blue filters. He had the photographer Thomas Sutton photograph a tartan ribbon three times, each time with a different colour filter over the lens. The three images were developed and then projected onto a screen with three different projectors, each equipped with the same colour filter used to take its image. When brought into focus, the three images formed a full colour image. The three photographic plates now reside in a small museum at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, the house where Maxwell was born.

Maxwell married Katherine Mary Dewar when he was 27 years of age, but they had no children. He died in Cambridge of abdominal cancer on 5 November 1879 at the age of 48. He had been a devout Christian his entire life. Maxwell is buried at Parton Kirk, near Castle Douglas in Galloway, Scotland.

Some of Maxwells achievements:

In 1859 he won the Adams prize in Cambridge for the paper 'On the Stability of Saturn's Rings'.
In 1861 he was elected to the Royal Society.
In 1861 he took the first permanent colour photograph.
In 1866 he statistically formulated, independently of Ludwig Boltzmann, the Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic theory of gases.
In 1871 he was the first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge
His quantitative connection between light and electromagnetism is considered one of the great triumphs of 19th century physics.
Maxwell's work on colour blindness won him the Rumford Medal.
One of his last great contributions to science was the editing (with copious original notes) of the electrical researches of Henry Cavendish.

Tributes:

The maxwell (Mx) unit measuring magnetic flux (commonly abbreviated as f).
Maxwell Montes, a mountain range on Venus, one of only three features on the planet that are not given female names.
The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the largest sub-mm astronomical telescope in the world, with a diameter of 15 metres.
The 1977 James Clerk Maxwell building of the University of Edinburgh, housing the schools of mathematics, physics, computer science and meteorology.
The James Clerk Maxwell building at the Waterloo campus of King's College London, in commemoration of him being Professor of Natural Philosophy at King's from 1860 to 1865. The university also has a chair in Physics named after him, and a society for undergraduate physicists.
The £4 million James Clerk Maxwell Centre of the Edinburgh Academy was opened in 2006 to mark his 175th anniversary.
James Clerk Maxwell Road in Cambridge, which runs along one side of the Cavendish Laboratory.
The University of Salford's main building has also been named after him.
James Clerk Maxwell was featured in the 1995 SNES game Tales of Phantasia as a summon that can aid the party in battle. His ability consisted of electromagnetic spheres that attacked the enemy
He ranked 24 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.
He also made the BBCs 100 Greatest Britons at position 91.