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James Clerk Maxwell (June 13, 1831 - November 5, 1879) was a Scottish physicist. His works cover a wide area of science, and he is regarded as one of the finest minds of the 19th century. His major work was on light and electromagnetic waves. He showed that oscillating charges produced waves in an electromagnetic field, and that these waves had the same velocity as light. This led him to predict other forms of electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves. His equations introduced the value c for the speed of light. He also worked on the motions of molecules in a gas, and showed that Saturn's rings must be composed of numerous particles. He died of abdominal cancer in 1879 at the age of 48. His discoveries helped usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for such fields as special relativity and quantum mechanics. In the millennium poll, a survey of the 100 most prominent physicists, Maxwell was voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein.
