Obituary. 499 
OBITUARY. 
James CuerK Maxwett, F.R.S.—By the early death of Professor 
idge has 
of 1854, He became a fellow of his es in 1855, and accepted 
i ege, Aberdeen, in 1856, 
College, London, where he remained till 1865. But he was not 
in his element as a lecturer, and it was not until his appointment 
in 1871 to the professorship of Experimental Physics in Cam- 
bridge, with the direction of the laboratory which the munificence 
of the Duke of Devonshire shortly afterwards presented to the 
University, that he found himself in a position thoroughly suited 
to his tastes and abilities. 
of colors on the retina, with especial reference to the phenomena 
of color blindness. His classical paper on Saturn’s rings was 
of the most important scientific measurements that have been 
made in recent times, the formation, namely, of the stan 
known as the British Association Unit of Electrical Resistance, 
an account of which appears in the British Association Report for 
1864 
But the subject which had most attraction for him was the 
inquiry into the ultimate constitution of matter and the mechan- 
ism which produces the phenomena of force, whether electrical or 
gravitational. Masterly expositions by him of th 
theory of gases are to be found in the British Association Report 
for 1859, the Philosophical Magazine for 1860, the Philosophical 
Transactions for 1867, the article on “ Atoms ” of the new Ency- 
clopedia Britannica, and in his only too concise and pregnan 
Theory of Heat. It is, however, with his attempts at a mechan- 
ical theory of electricity, magnetism and light that his name will 
Am. Jour. Sct.—THIRD — Vou. XVII.—No. 108, Dzc., 1879. ane 
