11 



studies in a leisurely manner -without producing, or at least without 

 publishing, any original work. He became in due course a scholar of 

 the College. He was also elected member of a literary club, coming 

 thereby in contact with some of the most accomplished of his con- 

 temporaries. 



In January, 1854, he took the degree of B.A., being Second 

 Wrangler, but equal with the Senior Wrangler in the subsequent 

 examination for the Smith's Prizes. 



Shortly after taking his degree, he produced a memoir " On the 

 Transformation of Surfaces by Bending." By bending a surface is 

 meant " a continuous change of the form of the surface without 

 extension or contraction of any part of it," and the problem Maxwell 

 set himself was to discover some method at once simple and general 

 in its application for the measurement of the change in question. 

 Besides its main purpose, which was to develop clearer ideas of the 

 theory of bending, there are incidentally scattered through it good 

 expositions of many points in the geometry of surfaces, as, for 

 instance, the discussions on curvature and the deduction of Gauss's 

 and other expressions for specific curvature. 



Up to this point we have directed attention to Maxwell's papers. in 

 the order in which they were published, there being a special interest 

 attaching to them on account of the very early period of life at which 

 they were written. It will be convenient, however, to consider his 

 published papers under some sort of classification, and this we pro- 

 pose to do further on ; in the meantime the leading events of his life 

 subsequent to 1854 may now be briefly recorded. 



In 1855 he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity, which he retained 

 until his marriage in 1858. He was, however, subsequently elected 

 to an honorary fellowship, a distinction which the College confers only 

 upon the most gifted of her sons. The latter honour was shared 

 on the same occasion by Dr. Lightfoot, the present Bishop of Durham, 

 the late Mr. Spedding, editor of Bacon's works, and Professor Cayley. 



In 1856 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy in 

 Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he continued till that College was 

 united to her rival, King's College, and formed into what is now known 

 as the University of Aberdeen. 



In 1858, he married Katherine Dewar, daughter of the Principal 

 of Marischal College. 



During his tenure of the Aberdeen Professorship the subjects which 

 appear to have engaged most of his attention were the Theory of 

 Colours and the Stability of Saturn's Rings, his essay on the latter 

 subject obtaining for him the Adams Prize. He also continued his 

 study of Electricity, and in 1859 we have the first evidence that he 

 was working at the Kinetic Theory of Gases. 



In 1860, after the union of the Colleges in Aberdeen, Maxwell 



