James Clerk Maxwell was born in this New Town house in 1831, before becoming one of the great figures of nineteenth-century physics. His work unified electricity, magnetism, and light into electromagnetic theory, a leap often compared with Newton's work on gravity and Einstein's on relativity.
The house is not a major museum stop in the usual Edinburgh sense, but science-minded visitors will find it worth seeking out while walking between Stockbridge and the New Town. The building is managed by the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation and occasionally opens for talks and visits.