James Clerk Maxwell - Legacy

Legacy

Maxwell was ranked 91st on the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. His name is honoured in several ways:

• The maxwell (Mx), a compound derived CGS unit measuring magnetic flux
• Maxwell Montes, a mountain range on Venus, one of only three features on the planet that are not given female names
• The Maxwell Gap in the Rings of Saturn
• The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the largest submillimetre-wavelength astronomical telescope in the world, with a diameter of 15 metres
• The 1977 James Clerk Maxwell Building of the University of Edinburgh, housing the schools of mathematics, physics and meteorology
• The James Clerk Maxwell building at the Waterloo campus of King's College London, in commemoration of his time as Professor of Natural Philosophy at King's from 1860 to 1865. The university also has a chair in Physics named after him, and a society for undergraduate physicists.
• The £4 million James Clerk Maxwell Centre of the Edinburgh Academy was opened in 2006 to mark his 175th anniversary
• James Clerk Maxwell Road in Cambridge, which runs beside the Cavendish Laboratory
• The University of Salford's main building is named after him.
• Maxwell bridge, a bridge circuit involving resistors, a capacitor and an inductor
• A statue on Edinburgh's George Street
• A hologram in the Royal Society of Edinburgh building in George Street, Edinburgh
• A street in Aberdeen's Kincorth area is named after him.
• Thomas Pynchon, an American novelist, alludes to and explains Maxwell's demon in The Crying of Lot 49.
• P J Moore, keyboard player with The Blue Nile, is developing a theatre piece based on the life of J.C.M.
• Maxwell finite element analysis software
• In 2012 he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.