Here's another lovely bit of physics poetry. Last week it was John Updike on neutrinos . This week it is Scottish mathematican and physicist, James Clerk Maxwell , who is most famous for his theory of electromagnetic radiation (commonly known as Maxwell's equations ). James Clerk Maxwell and his wife, Katherine, circa 1869. Credit: Public domain Maxwell was the first person to realize that magnetic and electric fields are intimately related, and that light (ranging from radio waves to visible light to gamma rays) is the result of oscillating electromagnetic fields. On the side, Maxwell enjoyed reading and writing poetry, and many of his poems survive in a collection published by his life-long friend, Lewis Campbell, in 1882. This poem, " To The Chief Musician Upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode ", describes the magic and allure of physical phenomena. Maxwell composed it for his friend and fellow-physicist, Peter Guthrie Tait , and first published it anonymously in