A poll conducted by the BBC that surveyed the 100 most prominent physicists, James Clerk Maxwell was voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein. On the centenary of Maxwell's birthday, Einstein described Maxwell's work as the "most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton." Maxwell, in his famous equations, found a single description for electricity and magnetism, a remarkable feat. But he also showed that his equations predicted waves that traveled at the speed of light, showing that visible light, radio waves, microwaves, and X-rays, were also all part of the same phenomenon. Surely this was one of the most wonder-inducing Eureka moments in the history of human thought.
What was Maxwell's response? Maxwell was a devout Christian, who wrote frequently about his faith. In one letter, he wrote, "I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable." For Maxwell, the beauty of the natural world that he observed and the fact that he could discover it filled him with wonder, and it gave credence to the idea that there is a Creator who created an ordered universe and created us to inhabit and explore it.
