PREFACE. xiii 



These glimpses into Maxwell's character may prepare us to believe that, with all his 

 shyness, he was not without confidence in his own powers, as also appears from the account 

 which was given by the late Master of Trinity College, Dr Thompson, who was Tutor when 

 Maxwell personally applied to him for permission to migrate to that College. He appeared 

 to be a shy and diffident youth, but presently surprised Dr Thompson by producing a 

 bundle of papers, doubtless copies of those we have already mentioned, remarking " Perhaps 

 these may shew you that I am not unfit to enter at your College." 



He became a pupil of the celebrated William Hopkins of Peterhouse, under whom his 

 course of study became more systematic. One striking characteristic was remarked by his 

 contemporaries. Whenever the subject admitted of it he had recourse to diagrams, though 

 his fellow students might solve the question more easily by a train of analysis. Many 

 illustrations of this manner of proceeding might be taken from his writings, but in 

 truth it was only one phase of his mental attitude towards scientific questions, which 

 led him to proceed from one distinct idea to another instead of trusting to symbols and 

 equations. / 



Maxwell's published contributions to Mathematical Science during his undergraduate career 

 were few and of no great importance. He found time however to carry his investigations 

 into regions outside the prescribed Cambridge course. At the lectures of Professor Stokes* 

 he was regular in his attendance. Indeed it appears from the paper on Elastic Solids, 

 mentioned above, that he was acquainted with some of the writings of Stokes before he 

 entered Cambridge. Before 1850, Stokes had published some of his most important contri- 

 butions to Hydromechanics and Optics ; and Sir W. Thomson, who was nine years' Maxwell's 

 senior in University standing, had, among other remarkable investigations, called special 

 attention to the mathematical analogy between Heat-conduction and Statical Electricity. 

 There is no doubt that these authors as well as Faraday, of whose experimental researches 

 he had made a careful study, exercised a powerful directive influence on his mind. 



In January, 1854, Maxwell's undergraduate career closed. He was second wrangler, but 

 shared with Dr Routh, who was senior wrangler, the honours of the First Smith's Prize. 

 In due course he was elected Fellow of Trinity and placed on the staff of College Lecturers. 



No sooner was he released from the restraints imposed by the Trinity Fellowship 

 Examination than he plunged headlong into original work. There were several questions 

 he was anxious to deal with, and first of all he completed an investigation on the Trans- 

 formation of Surfaces by Bending, a purely geometrical problem. This memoir he presented 

 to the Cambridge Philosophical Society in the following March. At this period he also 

 set about an enquiry into the quantitative measurement of mixtures of colours and the 

 causes of colour-blindness. During his undergraduateship he had, as we have seen, found 

 time for the study of Electricity. This had already borne fruit and now resulted in the 

 first of his important memoirs on that subject, the memoir on Faraday's Lines of Force. 

 * Now Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Bart., M.P. for the University. 



