Enter Maxwell

Abstract

While Chapter 1 summarized the more general Victorian context for the scientific relevance of photography, this chapter summarizes Maxwell’s distinctive place and trajectory. Chapter 2 provides a brief overview of Maxwell’s family background, education and scientific work. It stresses the culturally and socially privileged and connected upbringing in a landowning family (more in Chapter 8). It notes also the intellectual significance of his distinctive educational trajectory, from Scotland to Cambridge, and in particular from Edinburgh to Trinity College. This trajectory helps explain the diversity, connectedness of Maxwell’s scientific researches, and his historical and philosophical framework of many of his works. Maxwell’s early exposure to scientific and intellectual organizations and record of intellectual interactions helps explain his collaborative disposition.