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Hello, he took the first color photograph, defined the nature of gases, and with a few

elegant mathematical equations expressed all the fundamental laws of light electricity and

magnetism, and in doing so he provided the tools

to create the technological age from radar to radio and television to mobile phones.

He's credited with But who was James Clark Maxwell? What were his ideas and does this 19th century

natural philosopher deserve a place alongside Newton and Einstein in a

Pantion of science? His relative lack of fame is puzzling. With me to discuss his legacy

is PM Harmon, editor of the Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clark Maxwell,

and professor of the History of Science at Lancaster University, Simon Shaffer, reader in History and

and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, and Joanna Haig, Professor of Atmospheric

Physics at Imperial College London. Simon Shaffer, Maxil was born at the beginning of the 19th century, can we just briefly say born, parents, education up to Edinburgh?

So Maxwell was born in the great city of Edinburgh, the Athens of the north in 1831. He was the son of a relatively

wealthy and slightly eccentric Scottish lawyer and he was brought up in that rather characteristic Scott's way

marrying together urban life with the rural estate. His father was indeed a lared in rural Galloway and Maxwell had

charmed early life. His mother died when he was very young and it's been argued that that had a

profound effect on him. He was a boy of extraordinary ingenuity, clarity, and curiosity.

He went to school in Edinburgh, to the school in Edinburgh in fact which had been founded to turn Scotsman into English gentlemen and founded by

Walter Scott to do that. He went up to Edinburgh universities, as was common for his class, and was exposed there to really a very advanced and profoundly influential course in natural philosophy and mathematics and in general philosophy.

I think it's the exposure to a wide and deep philosophical education which begins to mark Maxwell out as a natural philosopher of genius.

Two more things, that was terrific.

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