Maxwell, James Clerk

[person]

Scottish theoretical physicist and mathematician born in Edinburgh (1831-1879). Maxwell developed the classical electromagnetic theory, which synthesized previously unrelated observations, experiments, and equations of electricity and magnetism. In 1864, Maxwell wrote A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, in which he proposed that light is a wave. He also described what is now known as Maxwellian distribution, a statistical way of describing the kinetic theory of gases.