Katherine Clerk Maxwell

Katherine Mary Clerk Maxwell (; 1824 – 12 December 1886) was the wife of Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. In the 1850s and 1860s she aided him in some of his work on colour vision and his experiments on the viscosity of gases. She was born Katherine Dewar in 1824 in Glasgow and married Clerk Maxwell in Aberdeen in 1858. and the Presbyterian Rev. Daniel Dewar, later Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen. James announced their engagement in February 1858 and they were married in the parish of Old Machar, Aberdeen, on 2 June 1858. The couple did not have children.

Scientific contribution Before and during their marriage Katherine aided James in some of his experiments on colour vision and gases. Lewis Campbell confirms that the observer K was indeed Katherine. Katherine's main work for these experiments involved keeping a fire continuously stoked for hours on end in order to produce steam from a kettle and so maintain a constant temperature for the gases whose viscosity Maxwell was measuring. Despite this, and Katherine's role in caring for her husband, Margaret Tait (wife of P. G. Tait) is said to have accused Katherine of derailing her husband's career because of her illness and James Clerk Maxwell's care for her.