James Clerk Maxwell’s discovery of the nature of light led to radio waves and modern telecommunications as well as laying the foundations for much of modern physics. It was on Maxwell’s new foundations that Einstein rebuilt Newton’s work on motion, and the three are widely regarded together as the greatest physicists of all time. Yet even in his native Scotland Maxwell is much less well-known.

Now, ten years ahead of the bicentenary of Maxwell’s birth, Prof. Tom Stevenson tells the story of an extraordinarily brilliant man, of warmth and good humour, with some of Maxwell’s poems set to music, and images from his home at Glenlair in Galloway.

In association with the Museum of Communication at Burntisland in Fife, Orkney Wireless Museum, and the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation

You can watch this free event from here, through the YouTube link below, or you can also go to the Science Festival’s YouTube channel