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50 free James Clerk Maxwell trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
James Clerk Maxwell showed that electricity, magnetism and light are one phenomenon, predicted radio waves, proved Saturn's rings are made of countless particles, took the first colour photograph, founded statistical mechanics, invented a demon that still bothers physicists, and built the Cavendish Laboratory, all before dying at 48. Einstein said he stood on Maxwell's shoulders, not Newton's. This quiz covers the physics and the quiet Scot behind it. Easy questions ask what his equations describe, what he predicted about light and where he was born. Harder ones want the nickname bullies gave him at Edinburgh Academy, the age at which he wrote his first paper, the prize his Saturn essay won, the tartan ribbon photographed in 1861, the speed he calculated for electromagnetic waves, who compressed his twenty equations to four, the poem he sang to a Burns tune and the cancer that killed both him and his mother at 48. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's biography of James Clerk Maxwell, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Made for physics teachers, students and quiz hosts. Related quizzes: Michael Faraday, Famous Physicists and Physics.
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Q 01Maxwell's theory first described electricity, magnetism and what as manifestations of the same phenomenon?
Light
His equations achieved what is called the second great unification in physics, after Newton's.
Q 02Maxwell's unification of light and electricity led him to predict the existence of what?
Radio waves
Heinrich Hertz would generate and detect them in the late 1880s, a decade after Maxwell's death.
Q 03Which 1865 paper showed electric and magnetic fields travel as waves at the speed of light?
A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field
In it he wrote that light "is an electromagnetic disturbance propagated through the field according to electromagnetic laws".
Q 04What velocity did Maxwell obtain for electromagnetic waves using the electrical data of his day?
310,740,000 metres per second
It was close enough to the measured speed of light that he could "scarcely avoid the conclusion" that light was electromagnetic.
Q 05Who reduced Maxwell's twenty equations to the four now known as Maxwell's equations?
Oliver Heaviside
He also declared the electromagnetic potential arbitrary and in need of being "assassinated".
Q 06In which 1873 textbook did Maxwell's equations first appear in fully developed form?
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
Most of the work was done at Glenlair, between his London post and the Cavendish chair.
Q 07At what address in Edinburgh was Maxwell born on 13 June 1831?
14 India Street
The house now holds a museum run by the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation.
Q 08What was the name of the Kirkcudbrightshire estate where Maxwell grew up and worked?
Glenlair
The 1,500-acre estate is where the three-year-old asked of everything, "what's the go o' that?"
Q 09What nickname did Maxwell earn on his first day at Edinburgh Academy in homemade shoes?
Daftie
He bore it without complaint for years; his lifelong friends Lewis Campbell and P. G. Tait ended his isolation.
Q 10At what age did Maxwell write his first scientific paper, on drawing oval curves with a piece of twine?
14
James Forbes presented it to the Royal Society of Edinburgh because the author was deemed too young to do so himself.
Q 11What did teenage Maxwell discover by viewing stressed gelatine through polarising prisms?
Photoelasticity
The technique reveals stress distribution inside structures and is still used by engineers.
Q 12To which Cambridge college did Maxwell transfer from Peterhouse for an easier fellowship?
Trinity
There he was elected to the secret debating society known as the Cambridge Apostles.
Q 13Maxwell graduated in 1854 as Second Wrangler, behind which mathematician?
Edward Routh
The two were later declared equal in the tougher Smith's Prize examination.
Q 21Which near-fatal illness did Maxwell recover from in 1860 before moving to London?
Smallpox
His five years at King's College London were probably the most productive of his career.
Q 22What did Maxwell present at an 1861 Royal Institution lecture, photographed by Thomas Sutton?
The world's first colour photograph
The subject was a tartan ribbon shot through red, green and blue filters; the plates were barely sensitive to red, so the result was imperfect.
Q 23What was the subject of Maxwell and Sutton's pioneering 1861 colour photograph?
A tartan ribbon
Q 14Which Cambridge tutor, nicknamed the "senior wrangler-maker", coached Maxwell from 1851?
William Hopkins
The nickname reflected his record of producing top-ranked mathematics graduates.
Q 15Which three colours of light did Maxwell show would combine to make white, using Forbes's spinning tops?
Red, green and blue
The same additive primaries underpin colour television and every screen you own.
Q 16At which Aberdeen institution did Maxwell take the Chair of Natural Philosophy in 1856, aged 25?
Marischal College
He was a good 15 years younger than any other professor there and gave a weekly free lecture at the working men's college.
Q 17What did Maxwell conclude Saturn's rings must be made of, in the essay that won the 1859 Adams Prize?
Numerous small particles
He called them "brick-bats"; the Voyager flybys of the 1980s confirmed it more than a century later.
Q 18How much was the Adams Prize Maxwell won in 1859 for "On the stability of the motion of Saturn's rings"?
£130
He was the only entrant to make enough headway to submit; Astronomer Royal George Airy called it one of the most remarkable applications of maths to physics he had seen.
Q 19Who was Katherine Mary Dewar, whom Maxwell married in Aberdeen on 2 June 1858?
The daughter of Marischal College's principal
Seven years his senior, she helped in his laboratory and worked on his viscosity experiments.
Q 20Why did Maxwell lose his Aberdeen professorship in 1860?
Marischal merged with King's College and had no room for two professors
He then lost out to his friend Tait for the Edinburgh chair and went to King's College London instead.
A 1961 study found the red exposure only worked because ultraviolet light leaked through the red filter.
Q 24Which Royal Society honour did Maxwell receive in 1860 for his work on colour?
The Rumford Medal
He was elected a Fellow of the Society the following year.
Q 25Which older scientist did Maxwell regularly encounter at Royal Institution lectures?
Michael Faraday
The older man was 40 years his senior and showing signs of senility, but each respected the other's talents.
Q 26Maxwell's 1868 paper "On governors" is considered a founding document of which field?
Control theory
The governors in question were the centrifugal devices that regulated the speed of steam engines.
Q 27What is the 1867 thought experiment in which an imaginary being sorts particles by energy called?
Maxwell's demon
It appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics and still fuels debate about information and entropy.
Q 28Which physicist generalised Maxwell's gas-velocity theory, giving the distribution its double-barrelled name?
Ludwig Boltzmann
The formula gives the fraction of gas molecules moving at a given velocity at any temperature.
Q 29What did Maxwell construct in plaster in 1874 to explore phase transitions, based on Gibbs's papers?
A thermodynamic surface
A contemporary said only one man alive could understand Gibbs's papers: "That was Maxwell, and now he is dead."
Q 30Which chair did Maxwell become the first holder of when he returned to Cambridge in 1871?
Cavendish Professor of Physics
He supervised every step of building the Cavendish Laboratory and buying its apparatus.