Mr. John Clerk Maxwell,
"Postyknowswere,
"Kirkpatrick Durham,
"Dumfries."
Sometimes he would seal his letters with electrotypes of natural objects (beetles, etc.), of his own making. In July, 1845, he writes:—
I have got the eleventh prize for scholarship, the first for English, the prize for English verses, and the mathematical medal.
When only fifteen a paper on oval curves was contributed by him to the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In the spring of 1847 he accompanied his uncle on a visit to Mr. Nicol, the inventor of the Nicol prism, and on his return he made a polariscope with glass and a lucifer-match box, and sketched in water-colours the chromatic appearances presented by pieces of unannealed glass which he himself prepared. These sketches he sent to Mr. Nicol, who presented him in return with a pair of prisms of his own construction. The prisms are now in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. Maxwell found that, for unannealed glass, pieces of window-glass placed in bundles of eight or nine, one on the other, answered the purpose very well. He cut the figures, triangles, squares, etc., with a diamond, heated the pieces of glass on an iron plate to redness in the kitchen fire, and then dropped them into a plate of iron sparks (scales from the smithy) to cool.
In 1847 Maxwell entered the University of Edinburgh, and during his course of study there he contributed to the Royal Society of Edinburgh papers upon rolling curves and on the equilibrium of elastic solids. His attention was mostly devoted to mathematics, physics, chemistry, and mental and moral philosophy. In 1850 he went to Cambridge, entering Peterhouse, but at the end of a year he "migrated" to Trinity; here he was soon surrounded with a circle of friends who helped to render his Cambridge life a very happy one. His love of experiment sometimes extended to his own mode of life, and once he tried sleeping in the evening and working after midnight, but this was soon given up at the request of his father. One of his friends writes, "From 2 to 2.30 a.m. he took exercise by running along the upper corridor, down the stairs, along the lower corridor, then up the stairs, and so on until the inhabitants of the rooms along his track got up and laid perdus behind their sporting-doors, to have shots at him with boots, hair-brushes, etc., as he passed." His love of fun, his sharp wit, his extensive knowledge, and above all, his complete unselfishness, rendered him a universal favourite in spite of the temporary inconveniences which his experiments may have occasionally caused to his fellow-students.
An undergraduate friend writes, "Every one who knew him at Trinity can recall some kindness or some act of his which has left an ineffaceable impression of his goodness on the memory—for 'good' Maxwell was in the best sense of the word." The same friend wrote in his diary in 1854, after meeting Maxwell at a social gathering, "Maxwell, as usual, showing himself acquainted with every subject on which the conversation turned. I never met a man like him. I do believe there is not a single subject on which he cannot talk, and talk well too, displaying always the most curious and out-of-the-way information." His private tutor, the late well-known Mr. Hopkins, said of him, "It is not possible for that man to think incorrectly on physical subjects."
In 1854 Maxwell took his degree at Cambridge as second wrangler, and was bracketed with the senior wrangler (Mr. E. J. Routh) for the Smith's prize. During his undergraduate course, he appears to have done much of the work which formed the basis of his subsequent papers on electricity, particularly that on Faraday's lines of force. The colour-top and colour-box appear also to have been gradually developing during this time, while the principle of the stereoscope and the "art of squinting" received their due share of attention. Shortly after his degree, he devoted a considerable amount of time to the preparation of a manuscript on geometrical optics, which was intended to form a university text-book, but was never completed. In the autumn of 1855 he was elected Fellow of Trinity. About this time the colour-top was in full swing, and he also constructed an ophthalmoscope. In May, 1855, he writes:—