I've just carried out a bit of an experiment. It's not a particularly scientific one, so don't go quoting me or anything. It's just designed to make a point, that's all. I e-mailed the names of three great scientists - Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell - to about 20 random people and asked which of the three names they recognised. Naturally, everyone knew the first two, Einstein and Newton, but most of them had never heard of Maxwell. "Sounds like a shoe shop to me," said one.

The only one to recognise Maxwell's name was a friend of mine who works in mobile phones, which is just as well because mobiles couldn't have been invented without Maxwell. Neither could television. Or radio. Or anything that involves pushing a button to make something happen. That's how important Maxwell was, and is.

So why - besides physicists, mathematicians and engineers who form a kind of Maxwell cult, such is their respect for him - has he not had the kind of recognition he deserves? Maxwell's theories on electromagnetism helped us to understand - and build - the world we know. When you pick up your phone, that's Maxwell. When you watch telly - Maxwell. When you take a colour photograph, yup, Maxwell. Yet the man in the street doesn't know who he is.

Admittedly, things have changed a bit over the past year or so, with the first trickles of recognition. There was the celebration of the 175th anniversary of his 1831 birth, a few exhibitions and a book here and there. But for one tenacious band of Scottish Maxwellians, it's still not enough and they are determined to raise his profile further. Their grand scheme is for a statue of the great man on George Street in Edinburgh.

The statue was the idea of Sir Michael Atiyah, who has been driving the campaign to raise the £300,000 the project will cost.

Sir Michael is one of Britain's leading geometers (a mathematician specialising in geometry). He is also president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the kind of brilliant scientist and polymath who speaks so quickly because his conversation is trying to keep up with his mind. I'm meeting him in his office on George Street from which he will be able to see the statue of Maxwell when it is erected.

Sir Michael is a passionate Maxwellian. He rattles through the story of the great man without any full stops or commas: how, as a child in Edinburgh and Galloway, Maxwell started to question the world and how it worked; how Maxwell went to school and earned the nickname Dafty because of his broad accent and old-fashioned clothes; how he went to Cambridge and his contemporaries realised that they had a genius in their midst; how he died - when he was only 48 - before it was realised just how important his work really was. And how he eluded the fame he deserves.

There are two reasons for that lack of fame, as far as Sir Michael is concerned. "First, scientists generally don't get the same sort of recognition as politicians or leading figures of the church or kings, so there are very few statues of scientists," he says. "There are plenty of kings, prime ministers and bishops, but scientists don't usually get there.

"Secondly, Maxwell died even before he became famous, scientifically. His main theories weren't universally accepted until about 20 years after his death, unlike Kelvin who lived to a ripe old age and was famous in his lifetime. Very few scientists break out into the David Beckham class."

Without being completely unfair to Beckham, it's interesting Sir Michael should have chosen that particular example. Beckham is one of the most famous men on the planet for . . . what, exactly? Wearing aftershave and being married? Admittedly, there is the football, but his fame has, if anything, increased since he passed his career peak. Maxwell, on the other hand, was not famous, even though he made profound discoveries about how the world works. If you took away Maxwell, says Sir Michael, the whole of modern technology would collapse. If you took away Beckham, you'd have to find something else to put in Heat magazine.

"All electronics is based on Maxwell's theories - television, radio, mobile phones," says Sir Michael. "He was also one of the pioneers of colour photography. One of the first things he also did was explain the rings of Saturn. That was a very hard piece of mathematics."

In other words, Maxwell is the greatest physicist after Newton. Newton laid down the laws of mechanics and gravity, and Maxwell did the same for electromagnetism, showing that light was part of the electromagnetic spectrum. His electromagnetic theory is now recognised as one of the most important of all scientific discoveries and the massive body of work he left behind still forms the basis of many of today's standard texts of physics and engineering. It was also Maxwell's work on the role of fields of force that led Einstein to his theory of relativity. Einstein knew that. Maxwell, said Einstein, didn't just produce equations, he revolutionised the way people thought. "One scientific epoch ended and another began with James Clerk Maxwell," he said.

Maybe so few of us know all of that because Maxwell himself wasn't a self-promoter; he was a modest man; he didn't go around saying this is the theory, you must listen to me. At the Royal Society, I look at some of his original notes, neat little things that include delicate illustrations and explanations written in a tiny little style. I also visit his birthplace in India Street, Edinburgh. It's a big handsome house which is now owned by the Clerk Maxwell Foundation. In the front room of the house there are still bits and pieces of Maxwell's life, his dux medals, notes, paintings, a chair he sat in that has a curious pattern that looks a little like a strand of DNA. It all builds up a picture of a clever but modest, well-liked man.

Alexander Stoddart, the sculptor who is creating the new statue, agrees with this perception of Maxwell. He calls it a symphonic undertaking, a work of engineering, but also of art, a long process that will eventually sit on a street in a city for a thousand years. He has clearly connected with Maxwell.

"You can never get to know him but there are certain things you can get to know about his nature," he says. "What I'm doing with Maxwell is making a reference to the continuation of the Scottish Enlightenment. I've tried to make a link between three great men - David Hume, Walter Scott and Maxwell. A philosopher, an artist and a scientist presenting this long continuation of Scottish genius."

It was almost inevitable that Stoddart would one day be creating a statue of Maxwell. "Whenever I give a speech or something, someone always says why don't you do a statue of Maxwell? As a nation, we don't have proper monuments. Even in the field of science you would have thought it would have been done, but no. Finally, though, we are saying thank you to Maxwell."

When the statue is finally finished later this year and is raised on to its plinth, will Maxwell break through the barrier to recognition? Michael Atiyah certainly believes so. "When you walk down George Street and you suddenly see a new statue, it will make an impact," he says.

Maybe. It seems that Maxwell's discoveries have become so important in our lives that they have become invisible, taken for granted. Maybe Maxwell lacks that simple phrase or equation that the public can grasp. Logie Baird=television. Benjamin Franklin=kites and keys. Newton=gravity and an apple. That's it: Maxwell needs an apple. There is one story that might work. It's rumoured that he would drop cats on to his bed to find out from what height they would still land on their feet. Maybe Maxwell's apple is a cat.

In the absence of that story catching on, the statue will have to do the job of raising Maxwell's profile. The plan is for it to be unveiled in the autumn and there will also be a conference about the man and his work. Who knows if it will work. Maybe in a couple of years I will try my little experiment again and e-mail another random 20 people. And maybe this time the answers will be very different.

  • For more information about the statue project, visit www.royal soced.org.uk or e-mail statue@ royalsoced.org.uk. Maxwell's birthplace at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, is open to the public. For more information, visit www.clerkmaxwellfoundation.org or call 0131 343 1036.



Life of a genius

  • Born: June 13, 1831, in Edinburgh, at 14 India Street - the family then moved to their estate at Glenlair, near Dumfries.
  • Educated: At Edinburgh Academy and the universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge.
  • Career: In 1856, became professor of physics at Marischal College, Aberdeen, then moved first to King's College, London, before becoming the first professor of experimental physics at Cambridge in 1871.
  • Albert Einstein said: "The special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field."
  • Einstein also said: "Since Maxwell's time, physical reality has been thought of as represented by continuous fields, and not capable of any mechanical interpretation. This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton."