Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/16

 But while still a school boy he achieved a mathematical feat which was much more brilliant. His father was a member of the Scottish Society of Arts and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and it was his custom to take his son with him to the meetings, and indeed on visits to all places of scientific and industrial interest. A prominent member of the Society of Arts, Mr. D. R. Hay, a decorative painter, and author of a book First Principles of Symmetrical Beauty read a paper before that Society on how to draw a perfect oval. His method was by means of a string passing round three pegs. Young Maxwell had by this time entered on the study of the Conic Sections, and he took up the problem in his laboratory. He modified the manner of tracing an ellipse by doubling the cord from the tracing-point to one of the foci; the curve then described is the oval of Descartes. He also found out how to do it when twice the distance from one focus plus three times the distance from the other focus is to be constant. Maxwell's father wrote out an account of his son's method, and gave it to J. D. Forbes, then professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Both Forbes, and Kelland, the professor of mathematics, approved the paper as containing something new to science; it was read by Forbes at the next meeting of the Society, and is printed in the second volume of the Proceedings under the title "On the description of oval curves, and those having a plurality of foci; By Mr. Clerk-Maxwell, Jr., with remarks by Professor Forbes." The author was then 15 years of age. Next year (1847) he finished the curriculum at the Academy, first in mathematics and in English, and very nearly first in Latin.

He now became a student of the University of Edinburgh. At that time the curriculum in Arts embraced seven subjects: Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Physics, Logic and Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, English Literature. Maxwell made a selection skipping Latin, Greek, and English Literature. Kelland was the professor of mathematics, Forbes of physics, Sir William Hamilton of logic and metaphysics; under these he studied for two years. To Kelland and Forbes he was already known,