Maxwell published his first scientific paper at 14

One of the interesting facts about James Clerk Maxwell is that he published his first scientific paper at the age of 14. Maxwell didn't give much thought to his grades or exam performance while he was a student. For him, learning is everything. His sheet of paper is a series of oval curves that can be marked with a pin and thread, demonstrating his love of all things geometry, related to shape and form.

Maxwell's interests went way beyond the curriculum, therefore he doesn't pay much attention to how well he does on exams. At the age of 14, he penned his first scientific paper. In it, he discussed linked curves with more than two foci, the properties of the Cartesian ellipse and oval, and a mechanical method of sketching mathematical curves with a piece of rope. Maxwell was thought to be too young to deliver the work on his own, therefore James Forbes, a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, presented the 1846 paper, "On the Description of Oval Curves and Lines with Many Lures," to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Although René Descartes had studied the features of these multifocal ellipses in the 17th century, Maxwell's study was more straightforward in its design.