James Clerk Maxwell Statue

This fairly recent statue in Edinburgh was sculpted by Alexander Stoddart and unveiled in 2008.
Maxwell’s stature as a physicist is apparently comparable to Einstein and Newton but I am ashamed to say I had never heard of him until yesterday! He was even awarded third place in a poll of the greatest physicists of all time. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, One scientific epoch ended and another began with James Clerk Maxwell.
The statue is shown holding his ‘colour top’, a spinning disc with coloured paper which was used to learn more about the physiology of colour vision. His work led to the world’s first colour photograph in 1861.
The sculptor Alexander Stoddart (born Edinburgh, 1959) has been Her Majesty’s Sculptor since 2008. He is mainly known for his large civic works including the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith (also found in Edinburgh).