Imagine a world without electricity, radio waves, or even the understanding of light and color. It might surprise you that these cornerstones of our modern world owe a debt to one man: James Clerk Maxwell.

This 19th-century Scottish physicist revolutionised science by unifying the forces of electricity and magnetism, forever changing our understanding of the universe. It’s no surprise that Maxwell was a child genius, reciting long passages of John Milton and the whole of the 119th psalm (176 verses) at age eight.

As an adult, Maxwell came up with the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation - the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. If that wasn’t enough, he also presented the first durable colour photograph and laid the groundwork for chaos theory.