^HORTLY after the death of Professor James Clerk Maxwell a Committee was 

 formed, consisting of graduate members of the University of Cambridge and 

 of other friends and admirers, for the purpose of securing a fitting memorial of 

 him. 



The Committee had in view two objects : to obtain a likeness of Professor 

 Clerk Maxwell, which should be placed in some public building of the Uni- 

 versity ; and to collect and publish his scattered scientific writings, copies of 

 which, so far as the funds at the disposal of the Committee would allow, 

 should be presented to learned Societies and Libraries at home and abroad. 



It was decided that the likeness should take the form of a marble bust. 

 This was executed by Sir J. E. Boehm, R.A., and , is now placed in the 

 apparatus room of the Cavendish Laboratory. 



In carrying out the second part of their programme the Committee 

 obtained the cordial assistance of the Syndics of the University Press, who 

 willingly consented to publish the present work. At the request of the Syndics, 

 Mr W. D. Niven, M.A., Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Trinity College and 

 now Director of Studies at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, undertook the 

 duties of Editor. 



The Committee and the Syndics desire to take this opportunity of 

 acknowledging their obligation to Messrs Adam and Charles Black, Publishers 

 of the ninth Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, to Messrs Taylor and 

 Francis, Publishers of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Maga- 

 zine and Journal of Science, to Messrs Macmillan and Co., Publishers of 

 Nature and of the Cambridge and Dublin Mathematical Journal, to Messrs 

 Metcalfe and Co., Publishers of the Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied 

 Mathematics, and to the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education, 

 Proprietors of the Handbooks of the South Kensington Museum, for their 

 courteous consent to allow the articles which Clerk Maxwell had contributed to 

 these publications to be included in the present work ; to Mr Norman Lockyer 

 for the assistance which he rendered in the selection of the articles re-printed 

 from Nature ; and their further obligation to Messrs Macmillan and Co. for 

 permission to use in this work the steel engravings of Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, 

 and Helmholtz from the Nature Series of Portraits. 



