Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/44



was born at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 28th of April, 1831. His father was then private secretary to the Duke of Buccleuch, afterwards, I believe, a bookseller and the publisher of a monthly called Tait's Magazine. Peter Guthrie was educated at the Grammar School of Dalkeith, then at the Circus Place School in Edinburgh, and eventually at the Edinburgh Academy, where he had Maxwell for a classmate. Of equal age and similar genius they were drawn into close friendship. They left the Academy together, and took up the same classes of mathematics and physics at the University of Edinburgh. But while Maxwell continued in his studies there for three years, and drank deeply of philosophy and natural science as well as of mathematics and physics, Tait left after one brief session for the University of Cambridge. I dare say had Tait studied philosophy and natural science as Maxwell did, his writings would have been more logical, and his mental makeup less eccentric.

When he entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge, he was 18 years of age. His private tutor was William Hopkins the most successful coach of his time. He graduated as senior wrangler in 1852, and was also first Smith's prizeman. He was immediately made a mathematical tutor to his college, and very soon a Fellow. The second wrangler and second Smith's prizeman of the same year was W. J. Steele, an intimate friend of Tait. The two friends proceeded forthwith to prepare in conjunction a treatise called Dynamics of a Particle; but Steele lived to write only a few chapters. The book was