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Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A (2008) 366, 1685–1696

doi:10.1098/rsta.2007.2178
Published online 25 January 2008

Maxwell and the science of colour

B Y M ALCOLM S. L ONGAIR *
Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK

This non-technical review of Maxwell’s contributions to the quantitative theory of

colour was presented at a symposium in Aberdeen to celebrate the 150th anniversary
of his appointment as professor of natural philosophy at Marischal College. Maxwell
maintained his interest in the science of light and colour from his childhood to the last
decade of his life. He lavished the same care and imagination on these studies as he did on
his epochal contributions to electromagnetism and statistical physics.
Keywords: James Clerk Maxwell; colour; light box; history

1. Introduction

James Clerk Maxwell’s contributions to electromagnetism, the kinetic theory of

gases, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are rightly recognized as among
the greatest contributions to science, providing the essential link between
Newtonian physics and the revolutions in physics that were to take place in the
early decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, he had a deep interest
in many other topics. In particular, his interest in the science of colour remained
with him throughout his life, from early childhood to his last decade. In this
paper, Maxwell’s achievements in the science of colour are set in their historical
context. The story will begin with the history of light and colour from Snell to
Young. Then, Maxwell’s early interest in colour phenomena will be discussed,
leading to his development of the quantitative theory of colour vision.

2. From Snell to Young

In 1621, Willebrord van Snel van Royen discovered the law of refraction when a
light ray crosses the interface between two media. In modern notation, the
well-known form of what is known as Snell’s law is written
n 1 sin q1 Z n 2 sin q2 ; ð2:1Þ
where n 1 and n 2 are the refractive indices of the two media and q1 and q2 are the
angles of incidence and refraction. This is the law which is at the heart of optics,
lenses, microscopes and telescopes. One of the first applications of Snell’s law was
made by René Descartes to account for the formation of rainbows. He studied the
internal reflection of light within spherical raindrops and showed that there is a
minimum angle of deflection of the light rays amounting to 428 for a single
*msl1000@cam.ac.uk
One contribution of 20 to a Theme Issue ‘James Clerk Maxwell 150 years on’.

1685 This journal is q 2008 The Royal Society

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1686 M. S. Longair

B a
b D
d
E

Figure 1. A sketch of the origin of single and double rainbows. (Adapted from Descartes’ Les
Météores of 1637.)

reflection within the raindrop. If there are two internal reflections, the minimum
angle is 518. This theory predicted correctly the observed angles of single and
double rainbows with respect to a line from the Sun through the observer’s head
to the centre of the rainbow. A sketch of the origin of single and double rainbows
appeared in Descartes’ Les Météores of 1637 (figure 1). There was, however, no
understanding of the origin of the colours in the rainbow. This was to be
elucidated by Isaac Newton.
In 1665–1666, Newton was aged 22 and in these years he discovered the
binomial theorem, the integral and differential calculuses, the theory of colour in
optics and unified celestial mechanics and the theory of gravity. These were
staggering achievements. In the field of optics and colour, the key experiment of
these years was Newton’s ‘experimentum crucis’. He passed sunlight though a
high quality prism and observed that white light was split up into the colours of
the spectrum. He then passed this spectrum through a hole that allowed only one
of the colours to be selected. On passing this single colour through a second
prism, he found that the light was not split up into any further colours. In
Newton’s words, ‘Light itself is a heterogeneous mixture of differently refrangible
rays’ (Turnbull et al. 1959–1977).
This result gave rise to one of Newton’s many disputes with other scientists.
The French experimenters could not reproduce the result of the experimentum
crucis, but found instead that the separate colours could be split up into further
colours. It turned out that Newton had found the correct answer owing to his use
of higher quality prisms than those available to the French scientists, but it was
many years before Newton’s view prevailed (Shaffer 1989).
Since different colours are refracted through different angles, white light is not
focused at a single point by a lens, the phenomenon known as chromatic
aberration. To get round his problem, Newton invented the all-reflecting, or

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Maxwell and the science of colour 1687

(a) (b) P

C A Sol
purple

E La
indigo
G Fa
blue
H
Sol
green

I La
yellow
K Mi
orange
M Fa
red
B Sol
D

Figure 2. (a) Newton’s all-reflecting telescope. The sketches above the telescope show a comparison
of a crown observed with Newton’s telescope (fig. 2) and a refracting telescope (fig. 3; Newton
1672). (b) Newton’s division of the spectrum of white light into seven colours, with the seven
separate tones of the harmonic scale shown to the right of the spectrum. (Adapted from P. Cook in
Fauvel et al. (1988, p. 118).)

Newtonian, telescope (figure 2a). He built the telescope himself, including the
grinding of the mirrors. The resulting telescope had superior imaging qualities
when compared with the Galilean refracting telescope, as he demonstrated in his
paper published in the Phil. Trans. R. Soc. in 1672.
Newton divided the spectrum into seven colours, the famous VIBGYOR
sequence of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (figure 2b). In his
choice of seven colours, he was influenced by the ideas of harmonic proportion,
which had been set out in Kepler’s great treatise The harmony of the world of
1618 and which had influenced all aspects of the arts and sciences in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The treatise contained the discovery of
Kepler’s third law of planetary motion, which was crucial in Newton’s discovery
of the law of gravity, and so there is no doubt that Newton knew the treatise
well. There are seven different notes in the just harmonic scale, their frequencies
all being in the ratios of small whole numbers, and so Newton divided the
spectrum into seven colours. Newton’s seven colour theory was elaborated by
Voltaire in his Élémens de la Philosophie de Neuton of 1738.
The next notable figure in the story is Thomas Young, whose brilliant
researches of 1801 not only put the wave theory of light on a firm physical
foundation but also resulted in the theory of three-colour vision. His most famous
experiment was the double-slit experiment in which he found that, when sunlight
is passed through a single narrow slit and then through a pair of similar slits, a
characteristic pattern of bright and dark bands is observed on a screen. He

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1688 M. S. Longair

interpreted the appearance of this pattern of light rays in terms of the

constructive and destructive interference of light waves. This was conclusive
evidence in favour of the wave theory of light.
In the same paper, he also discussed how the eye would perceive lights of
different wavelengths or colours. In his picture, the light receptors in the retina of
the eye act as resonators which are excited by the incoming light waves. He
realized, however, that there was a problem with this picture. In his words:
As it is almost impossible to conceive each sensitive point of the retina to contain an infinite
number of particles, each capable of vibrating in perfect unison with every possible undulation,
it becomes necessary to suppose the number limited: for instance to the three principal colours,
red, yellow and blue . and that each of the particles is capable of being put into motion more or
less forcibly by undulations differing less or more from perfect unison. . each sensitive
filament of the nerve may consist of three portions, one for each principal colour.
( Young 1802, pp. 20–21)
There are several interesting points about Young’s proposal. First, he took the
three principal colours to be red, yellow and blue. Second, there was no
distinction between the mixing of lights and the mixing of pigments. Third, the
theory was qualitative rather than quantitative.

3. The young Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell came from a distinguished Scottish family. Although born
in Edinburgh, he spent most of his childhood at the family estate at Glenlair in
the Dumfries and Galloway region. By great good fortune, James’s cousin,
Jemima Wedderburn, who was 8 years his senior, was a brilliant artist who
painted scenes from family life almost every day. Her watercolours, a number of
which can be viewed on the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation’s website (http://
www.clerkmaxwellfoundation.org), are a wonderful record of life at Glenlair and
Edinburgh. Among my favourites are the paintings of James and Jemima
‘tubbing’, meaning using washing tubs as coracles in a nearby duck pond. James
had an insatiable curiosity about everything. According to the biography by
Campbell & Garnett (1882), from his earliest years, he would continually ask,
‘Show me how it doos’, or ‘What’s the go o’that?’ If he did not receive a
satisfactory answer to the latter question, he would ask, ‘But what’s the
particular go o’that?’
At home, James’s father, John Maxwell, James and Jemima were fascinated
by the new range of optical toys which became available during the 1830s. These
relied upon the phenomenon of the persistence of vision by which the eye and
brain preserve the image for approximately 1/20th of a second. As in a
cinematographic film, the appearance of movement is obtained by viewing the
images faster than the eye can track individual frames.
The thaumatrope was invented in 1825 by the London physician John Paris,
who made the toy popular. Two images are printed on either side of a circular
card which was then rotated rapidly about a diameter by twisted strings
attached at opposite ends of this diameter. Owing to the persistence of vision, the
images on either side of the disc are observed to be superimposed.
In 1832, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and his sons introduced the
phenakistoscope, meaning ‘spindle viewer’. About a dozen images were drawn on

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Maxwell and the science of colour 1689

Figure 3. Maxwell’s improved zoetrope of 1861. By inserting concave lenses instead of slits, the
virtual image appears on axis while the drum is rotated and the field of view is considerably
increased. (Courtesy of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge.)

the disc which was then rotated about its axis and the images viewed in a mirror
by looking through radial slits cut in the disc. The viewer sees the images very
rapidly one after the other, producing the effect of a moving image.
The phenakistoscope was soon overtaken by the zoetrope which was invented
in 1834 by William Horner. Now, the images were painted on a strip which was
pasted to the inside of a rotating cylinder. The images were viewed through the
slits in the rotating drum. Zoetropes became popular, a 1905 supplement of the
New York Sunday American and Journal newspaper including a cardboard cut-
out entitled ‘Make Your Own Zoetrope’ (this can be downloaded from the web-
site http://brightbytes.com/collection/zoetrope.pdf).
James and Jemima delighted in these scientific toys. As expressed by
Campbell & Garnett:
This was a source of endless amusement to the two cousins, the younger generally contriving,
and in part executing, the elder giving life and spirit to the creatures represented. The cow
jumping over the waxing and waning moon, the dog pursuing the rat in and out of his hole,
the circus horse, on which the man is jumping through the hoop, have the firmness and truth
of touch, the fullness of life, familiar to the many admirers of [Jemima Wedderburn]—the
tadpole that wriggles from the egg and changes gradually into a swimming frog; the cog-
wheels moved by the pendulum, and acting with the precision of clockwork.
(Campbell & Garnett 1882, p. 23)

James was not yet 10 when they invented many of their own designs. James
remained fond of the zoetrope and in 1861 improved its performance by inserting
concave lenses instead of slits on the drum so that the virtual image appeared on

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1690 M. S. Longair

Figure 4. Maxwell aged 24 with his colour top. (Courtesy of the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation.)

axis while it rotated (figure 3). The resulting image was much improved and a
wider field of view observable. He set this invention as a problem in the
Cambridge 1869 tripos examinations.
James attended Edinburgh Academy from 1841 to 1847 and lived at the house
of his aunt Isabella Wedderburn. He was regarded as somewhat eccentric by his
schoolmates. As his biographers wrote, ‘Some eccentricity of behaviour earned
him the name Dafty’ (Campbell & Garnett 1882). But he took this all in good
part and his originality was soon recognized by his school friends. This was also
the period of his first scientific papers. In 1846, his paper On the description of
oval curves was read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Prof. James David
Forbes.1
After high school, Maxwell proceeded to Edinburgh University where among
the books he borrowed from the library were Newton’s Optics and Poisson’s
Mechanics. During his years at Edinburgh University, he published papers On
1
Many more details of Maxwell’s life and scientific works can be found in the books by Everitt
(1976), Harman (1990, 1995, 1998, 2002) and Niven (1890).

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Maxwell and the science of colour 1691

(a) (b)

painted paper discs nut and washer

colour sample
wood disc

wood dowel

(c) green (d) 520

530 CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram
1.0 0.8 540
510
0.9 550
0.7
0.8 560
0.6 570
0.7
0.6 0.5 580
590
0 0.5 0 600
0.1 0.1 0.4
610
0.2 0.4 0.2 630
0.3 0.3 490 680
0.40.3 0.4
0.5 0.5
0.6 0.2 0.6 0.2
0.7 0.7 1931 2-degree
0.8 0.1 0.8 480 observer
0.1
0.9 0.9 efg's computer lab
1.0 0 1.0 470
0 460 www efg2.com/lab
blue red 0 0.1 420 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8

Figure 5. (a) Illustrating the three coloured discs used in Maxwell’s colour top (see http://www.
handprint.com/HP/WCL/colortop.html). (b) Maxwell’s original version of the colour triangle
(Campbell & Garnett 1882). (c) Comparison with a modern version, showing quantitatively the
proportions of different primary colours needed to synthesize those within the triangle. The picture
is rotated 1208 clockwise with respect to (b) (see http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/colortop.
html). (d ) The CIE diagram. The pure colours in the white light spectrum are shown around the
perimeter of the diagram from 420 to 680 nm.

the theory of rolling curves (1849) and The equilibrium of elastic solids (1850) in
the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
In 1847, Maxwell was taken by his uncle John Cay to visit the optical
laboratory of William Nicol, the distinguished optician and inventor of the Nicol
prism. Maxwell later recalled that:
I was taken to see [William Nicol], and so, with the help of ‘Brewster’s Optics’ and a glazier’s
diamond, I worked at polarisation of light, cutting crystals, tempering glass, etc.

In 1848, he undertook a series of experiments on the chromatic effects of polarized

light in doubly refracting materials, crystals and mechanically strained glasses.
He remarked on the ‘gorgeous entanglements of colours’ in strained glasses.
Maxwell went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1850 and was to remain
there until his appointment to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Marischal

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1692 M. S. Longair

College, Aberdeen in 1856. In his letter of recommendation, Forbes wrote to

William Whewell, Master of Trinity College:
Pray do not suppose that . I am not aware of his exceeding uncouthness, as well
Mathematical as in other respects . I thought the Society and Drill of Cambridge the only
chance of taming him and much advised his going.
In his obituary of Maxwell, his great friend Peter Guthrie Tate wrote:
. he brought to Cambridge in the autumn of 1850, a mass of knowledge which was really
immense for so young a man, but in a state of disorder appalling to his methodical private tutor.

4. Maxwell’s quantitative theory of colour mixing

In 1855, Maxwell was awarded a fellowship at Trinity College. Among his many
interests, he studied the composition of light by means of his colour top, which was
central to his first major assault upon the quantitative theory of colour (figure 4).
The three coloured paper discs could be clamped to the wooden disc of the top
in such a way as to allow different amounts of the primary colours to be mixed
when the top was spun (figure 5a). A smaller central disc contained the colour
sample which was to be matched by adding together different amount of the
primary colours. To eliminate the effect of the different brightnesses of the
central disc and the outer colours, different amounts of black could be added to
the central disc. Maxwell demonstrated that all colours could be synthesized by
different combinations of the three primary lights, red, green and blue. He also
distinguished clearly between the results of mixing lights of different colours and
mixing pigments. For example, he confirmed Helmholtz’s discovery that mixing
blue and yellow light does not produce green, but rather ‘a pinkish tint’.
By 1855, Maxwell had adopted the three-colour receptor theory of Young
with primary lights red, green and blue, and determined experimentally colour
equations which quantified how much of each primary colour was necessary to
create any particular colour. All colours could then be represented on a colour
triangle in which the distance from the corners indicated how much of each
primary colour has to be mixed (figure 5b). Note that these colour diagrams
are projections onto a two-dimensional plane of three-dimensional colour
space. He carried out his colour matching experiments with many independent
observers and found little variation between them. These experiments also
suggested an explanation for colour blindness if one of the three sets of
receptors in the eye was not present. Figure 5c shows a modern version of
Maxwell’s colour triangle.

5. Maxwell at Marischal College, Aberdeen

Maxwell accepted the post of professor of natural philosophy at Marischal

College, Aberdeen in 1856 to be closer to his family and the estate at Glenlair.
His father died in 1856 and in 1859 he married Katherine Mary Dewar, daughter
of the principal of Marischal College. He was made redundant when Marischal
and King’s colleges combined in 1860.

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Maxwell and the science of colour 1693

Maxwell’s 5 years at Aberdeen were among the most innovative and important
periods of his life. In 1857, he won the prestigious Adams Prize for his work on The
motion of Saturn’s rings. This was also the period of his papers on The dynamical top
(1857) and The theory of colours (1857, 1859–1860). He was also developing his ideas
on electromagnetism which were to reach their culmination over the succeeding 5
years with the formulation of what we now call Maxwell’s equations.
Maxwell was not fully satisfied with the results of his experiments with the colour
top and so devised a series of ‘light boxes’ which enabled different amounts of the
three primary lights to be mixed more precisely. The perfected light box,
constructed by the firm of Smith and Ramage of Aberdeen, was portable and so
could be used as a tool to study the colour sensitivities of many subjects (figure 6).
To understand how the light box worked, let us first use it backwards
(figure 7a). If white light is shone through the eyepiece at A, on passing through
the prisms and mirror, the normal spectrum of colours is produced at B. At B,
there are three adjustable slits which allow different amounts of blue, green and
red light to be transmitted.
If we now shine white light onto the slits at B, only the blue, green and red
colours are combined at A (figure 7b). The amount of each colour could be
precisely measured from the width of the slits at B. In addition, a comparison
white light beam could be viewed at A. To obtain an intense enough light source,
bright sunlight was shone onto white paper to provide a white light source.
Maxwell used the light box to study many different aspects of colour vision for
large samples of subjects. The experiments gave precise information about the com-
position of different colours and provided the forerunners of the modern chromaticity,
or Commission Internationale d’Éclairage (CIE), diagrams which define how
different colours can be synthesized from chosen primary colours. These convey
information about the different variables of colour vision, namely, the spectral colour
and the degree of saturation. An example of such a diagram is shown in figure 5d.
Maxwell was awarded the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society of London in
1860 for his researches in colour vision. He continued using light boxes after he
moved to King’s College London in 1860. He designed and had built an 8 ft light box
which was housed in a large garret which ran the whole length of his house at 8
Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington in London. Campbell & Garnett noted that:
When experimenting at the window with the colour-box ., he excited the wonder of his
neighbours, who thought him mad to spend so many hours in staring into a coffin.
(Campbell & Garnett 1882, p. 223)
Also in 1861, Maxwell took the first coloured photograph. A small piece of tartan
ribbon was photographed by a professional photographer on three plates through
red, green and blue-violet filters. Three positive plates were produced and these
were projected through the same filters onto a screen. When these images were
combined, a reasonably fully coloured image was produced. This additive three-
colour separation technique is employed nowadays in colour astrophotography.

6. Maxwell’s legacy

Maxwell’s studies provided the basis for the present understanding of the processes
of colour vision and also for the quantitative measurement of colour which
underpins a huge variety of modern manufacturing and service industries. The light

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1694 M. S. Longair

Figure 6. Maxwell’s light box constructed by the firm of Smith and Ramage of Aberdeen.
(Courtesy of the Cavendish Laboratory.)

(a)

blue B mirror
green
red prisms

A
white light

(b) comparison beam

of white light

B
white blue
green
light red C
A

working in reverse, only the rays reaching

the eyepiece are shown

Figure 7. (a) Maxwell’s light box working backwards. The diagram illustrates the dispersion of
white light when it is shone through the eyepiece onto the reflecting mirror and through the pair of
dispersing prisms. (b) Maxwell’s light box working forwards. The blue, green and red regions of the
spectrum are focused at A. The amount of each of these lights is precisely varied by changing the
width of the entrance slits.

sensors in the retina are the rods and cones. The rods are very sensitive and can
register the arrival of individual photons of light but have no colour discrimination.
The cones are less sensitive but are sensitive to light centred on red, green and blue
wavelengths. The sensitivity curves shown in figure 8 illustrate versions on normal
three-colour vision for different species and different forms of colour blindness.

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Maxwell and the science of colour 1695

1.0 (a)

0
1.0 (b)
relative sensitivity

0
1.0 (c)

0
400 500 600 700
wavelength (nm)

Figure 8. Light absorption curves for the pigments of cone cells. The curves show the relative
sensitivities of the three types of light cone as a function of wavelength, normalized to unity at
maximum sensitivity. (a) Dichromicity (two-colour vision) that is found in non-primate mammals
and 2% of human males. (b) Anomalous trichromicity, found in 6% of human males. (c) Normal
trichromicity (three-colour vision) found in normal human vision, Old World monkeys and apes.
(After J. Mollon, in Lamb & Bourrieau (1995, p. 129).)

What we actually perceive is determined by a large number of other factors

and this takes us into the realm of physiology and psychology (e.g. Lamb &
Bourrieau 1995). But the important lesson from Maxwell’s colour mixing
experiments is that it is only when monochromatic light is used that there is a
unique relationship between colour and wavelength. Any particular colour can be
produced in a number of different ways provided the same total signals are
applied to the three different cone types.

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1696 M. S. Longair

Maxwell understood that pigments are in a sense the opposite of lights. They
absorb some wavelengths and reflect others. For example, suppose we shine
white light onto a pigment which absorbs strongly in the central region of the
optical spectrum. The light we see reflected consists of the red and blue ends of
the spectrum, resulting in the colour magenta. This understanding of the
difference between mixing lights and pigments also solved the ‘green problem’.
Blue and yellow pigments absorb the ends of the spectrum and so, when they are
mixed, the residual reflected light is centred about green wavelengths.
What we actually perceive is determined by many other factors—is the surface
smooth or rough, is it highly reflective or polarizing, and so on? Furthermore, the
blue cones are rather sparsely distributed on the retina. This can fool the eye if
the object is observed with low angular resolution.
Maxwell continued his studies of colour and optical phenomena during his
subsequent career at Kings’ College London, at his home at Glenlair and at the
Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. From ca 1860 onwards was the period of his
development of his deep insights into electromagnetism, the unification of light
and electromagnetism, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, for which he
is rightly best remembered. It was characteristic of him, however, that he
brought to the quantitative study of colour the same imagination and
experimental skill which he displayed in all his other researches. It is remarkable
that he was able to maintain his interests over such a vast range of the physical
sciences and that he continued to make fundamental contributions to all of them
throughout his career.

References
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vols 1–3 (1846–1862, 1862–1873, 1874–1879). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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Lamb, T. & Bourrieau, J. (eds) 1995 Light and colour. Darwin College Lectures. Cambridge, UK:
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