Full Name: James Clerk Maxwell; Profession: Scottish theoretical physicist and mathematician, pioneer of classical electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, and color photography; Nationality: Scottish; Born: 13 June 1831; Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom (born at 14 India Street in Edinburgh’s New Town); Generation: 19th-century Victorian-era scientific revolution figure whose work bridged Newtonian mechanics and later relativity and quantum theory; Chinese Zodiac: Rabbit (1831 corresponds to the Year of the Rabbit in the traditional 12-year cycle). Zodiac Sign: Gemini (Sun around 21 degrees Gemini for his 13 June 1831 birth date); Age in 2026: 195 years old if alive, based on his 1831 birth year and 1879 death at age 48. Marital Status: Married (he married Katherine Mary Dewar in Aberdeen on 2 June 1858 and remained married to her until his death in 1879); Children: None (contemporary biographical and genealogical records agree the couple had no children); Description: James Clerk Maxwell was a shy, deeply religious, and remarkably original Scottish physicist whose four famous field equations unified electricity, magnetism, and light into a single electromagnetic theory, showing that electromagnetic disturbances propagate at the speed of light and revealing that light itself is an electromagnetic wave, a conceptual leap that Einstein later cited as the “deepest and most fruitful” advance in physics since Newton and that underpins technologies from radio and radar to modern telecommunications. He published foundational works such as “On Physical Lines of Force” (1861–62) and “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field” (1865), systematizing and extending the experimental results of Coulomb, Ampère, Gauss, and Faraday into a coherent mathematical structure that still forms the backbone of classical field theory. In kinetic theory and statistical mechanics, he introduced the Maxwell distribution of molecular speeds and used probabilistic reasoning to explain gas behavior, while also showing that the rings of Saturn must consist of countless small particles—work that earned him the Adams Prize and was later confirmed by astronomical observations. In 1861 he produced the world’s first color photograph, projecting an image of a tartan ribbon created by combining three separate photographic plates taken through red, green, and blue filters, thereby demonstrating the additive color principle that underlies modern color imaging. Educated at the University of Edinburgh and at Cambridge (where he graduated as Second Wrangler and won the Smith’s Prize), he held posts at Marischal College in Aberdeen and King’s College London before returning to his family estate at Glenlair to write his influential “Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism,” and in 1871, he became the first Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, where he designed and organized the Cavendish Laboratory that would become one of the most productive centers of experimental physics in the world. Remembered today as a “father of electromagnetism” and one of the greatest theoretical physicists, he exercised enormous influence on 20th‑century physics, inspiring Einstein and shaping the later development of special relativity, quantum theory, and electrical engineering. Cause of Death: Died in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, on 5 November 1879 from advanced abdominal (stomach) cancer, a disease that had also afflicted his mother, with medical accounts noting progressive difficulty eating and a diagnosis of abdominal cancer in the final years of his life.