Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/132

 as to suit his own views. 4. A rhymed autobiography of himself, written in his seventy-sixth year, Paisley, 1795.



MAXWELL, JAMES CLERK (1831–1879), first professor of experimental physics at Cambridge, was born in Edinburgh 13 Nov. 1831. His father, who died in 1856, was John Clerk, brother of Sir George Clerk, of Penicuik in Midlothian. John Clerk adopted the surname of Maxwell on succeeding to an estate in Kircudbrightshire, which had come into the family by a marriage with a Miss Maxwell. Clerk Maxwell's mother was Frances, daughter of Robert Cay, of Charlton, Northumberland. His early childhood was passed in his father's country house of Glenlair, near Dalbeattie. In 1839 his mother died, and two years later Maxwell became a pupil at the Edinburgh Academy, and in 1847 entered the university of Edinburgh, attending lectures on mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and mental philosophy. He had already, at the age of fifteen, communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh a paper ‘On the Description of Oval Curves’ (Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin. 1846, vol. ii.). A second paper ‘On the Theory of Rolling Curves’ (Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. vol. xvi. pt. v.), was read in 1849, and a third ‘On the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids’ (Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. vol. xx. pt. i.), in 1850. The last paper was the outcome of a visit paid in 1848 to Nicol, the inventor of Nicol's prism, who showed him the beautiful chromatic effects exhibited by unannealed glass in polarised light. It occurred to Maxwell to study by their aid the strains set up in an elastic substance such as gelatine when subject to stress, and to compare his experimental results with theory. In obtaining his theory Maxwell discarded the hypotheses of Navier and Poisson as to the action between the molecules of an elastic body, since they had led to results inconsistent with experiment, and starting afresh arrived at equations which, as he states, had been already obtained in a different way by Stokes and Candy. They had also been given in 1837 by Green, who based his work on the fundamental principle of the conservation of energy.

In October 1850 Maxwell left Edinburgh for Cambridge, entering as an undergraduate at Peterhouse, but in December of the same year he migrated to Trinity; Dr. Thompson, afterwards master, was his tutor. He became a pupil of the great ‘coach,’ Hopkins, in 1851, and in April 1852 was elected a scholar of his college. He graduated in 1854 as second wrangler, the senior being Dr. Routh of Peterhouse, with whom he was bracketed as first Smith's prizeman. In 1855 he was elected a fellow of Trinity, and was placed on the staff of lecturers. During the next year he was appointed professor of natural philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen. The college was amalgamated in 1860 with King's College, to form the university of Aberdeen, and Maxwell vacated his chair, but almost immediately afterwards became professor of natural philosophy in King's College, London. This post he resigned in 1865, retiring to private life at Glenlair, but in 1871 he was induced to come forward as a candidate for the new chair of experimental physics, which the university proposed to found at Cambridge. He was elected without opposition, and delivered his inaugural lecture 25 Oct. 1871.

The Duke of Devonshire, the chancellor, had just offered to present the university with a physical laboratory, and Maxwell's first work was to arrange the details of the plans and to superintend the building. The laboratory was opened in June 1874. The work of the professorship occupied him during term time for the next five years; the long vacation was usually spent at Glenlair. While staying there during the summer of 1879, he became seriously ill, and returned to Cambridge in October, only to succumb to a painful malady on 5 Nov. of the same year, at the early age of forty-eight.

In 1858 he married Katherine Mary Dewar, daughter of the principal of Marischal College.

Maxwell's power as an original investigator, of which he gave the first proofs at the age of fifteen, was signally illustrated shortly after he obtained his fellowship at Trinity. A paper on ‘Faraday's Lines of Force’ was read before the Cambridge Philosophical Society on 10 Dec. 1855 and on 11 Feb. 1856 (Camb. Phil. Soc. Trans. vol. x. pt. i.), and contains the germs of much of his future work. He had read Faraday's ‘Experimental Researches,’ and set himself ‘not to attempt,’ quoting his own words, ‘to establish any physical theory of a science in which I have hardly a single experiment, but to show how by a strict application of the ideas and methods of Faraday, the connection of the very different order of phenomena which he has discovered, may be placed before the mathematical mind.’ Following a suggestion of Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin), he worked his endeavour out by the aid of analogies with corresponding phenomena in hydrodynamics and heat. In later