James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell was the Scottish physicist who taught light, electricity and magnetism to speak as one voice. Born in 1831, he gave us the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation and the famous set of equations that achieved physics' second great unification after Newton, showing that electric and magnetic fields ripple through space as waves travelling at the speed of light, and thereby predicting radio itself. He founded statistical mechanics with the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, made the first durable colour photograph, described the rings of Saturn, glimpsed chaos and the butterfly effect, and became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. Einstein said he stood on Maxwell's shoulders.

His Sun in Gemini is the perfect signature for this life. Gemini is the marriage of Sun and Mercury, the messenger, the sign of connection and of holding two things in one mind, and who better to marry electricity to magnetism, and to weave light between them. It is the Sun of the versatile polymath who touches everything, from colour to gases to control theory. His Moon in Leo, king and queen in a single heart, gave that quicksilver intellect a warm, creative, generous core, the born performer whose ideas still light up our century with a flourish.