Chapter V: Cambridge.--Professor of Physics

During his retirement at Glenlair from 1865 to 1870 Maxwell was frequently at Cambridge. He examined in the Mathematical Tripos in 1866 and 1867, and again in 1869 and 1870.

The regulations for the Tripos had been in force practically unchanged since 1848, and it was felt by many that the range of subjects included was not sufficiently extensive, and that changes were urgently needed if Cambridge were to retain its position as the centre of mathematical teaching. Natural Philosophy was mentioned in the Schedule, but Natural Philosophy included only Dynamics and Astronomy, Hydrostatics and Physical Optics, with some simple Hydrodynamics and Sound.

The subjects of Heat, Electricity and Magnetism, the Theory of Elastic Solids and Vibrations, Vortex-Motion in Hydrodynamics, and much else, were practically new since 1848. Stokes, Thomson, and Maxwell in England, and Helmholtz in Germany, had created them.

Accordingly in June, 1868, a new plan of examinations was sanctioned by the Senate to come into force in January, 1873, and these various subjects were explicitly included.

Mr. Niven, who was one of those examined by Maxwell in 1866, writes in the preface to the collected works:--

“For some years previous to 1866, when Maxwell returned to
Cambridge as Moderator in the Mathematical Tripos, the studies
in the University had lost touch with the great scientific
movements going on outside her walls. It was said that some
of the subjects most in vogue had but little interest for the
present generation, and loud complaints began to be heard
that while such branches of knowledge as Heat, Electricity,
and Magnetism were left out of the Tripos examination, the
candidates were wasting their time and energy upon mathematical
trifles barren of scientific interest and of practical results.
Into the movement for reform Maxwell entered warmly. By his
questions in 1866, and subsequent years, he infused new life
into the examination; he took an active part in drafting the
new scheme introduced in 1873; but most of all by his writings
he exerted a powerful influence on the younger members of the
University, and was largely instrumental in bringing about the
change which has been now effected.”

But the University possessed no means of teaching these subjects, and a Syndicate or Committee was appointed, November 25th, 1868, “to consider the best means of giving instruction to students in Physics, especially in Heat, Electricity and Magnetism, and the methods of providing apparatus for this purpose.”

Dr. Cookson, Master of St. Peter’s College, took an active part in the work of the Syndicate. Professor Stokes, Professor Liveing, Professor Humphry, Dr. Phear, and Dr. Routh were among the members. Maxwell himself was in Cambridge that winter, as Examiner for the Tripos, and his work as Moderator and Examiner in the two previous years had done much to show the necessity of alterations and to indicate the direction which changes should take.

The Syndicate reported February 27th, 1869. They called attention to the Report of the Royal Commission of 1850. The Commissioners had “prominently urged the importance of cultivating a knowledge of the great branches of Experimental Physics in the University”; and in page 118 of their Report, after commending the manner in which the subject of Physical Optics is studied in the University, and pointing out that “there is, perhaps, no public institution where it is better represented or prosecuted with more zeal and success in the way of original research,” they had stated that “no reason can be assigned why other great branches of Natural Science should not become equally objects of attention, or why Cambridge should not become a great school of physical and experimental, as it is already of mathematical and classical, instruction.”

And again the Commissioners remark: “In a University so thoroughly imbued with the mathematical spirit, physical study might be expected to assume within its precincts its highest and severest tone, be studied under more abstract forms, with more continual reference to mathematical laws, and therefore with better hope of bringing them one by one under the domain of mathematical investigation than elsewhere.”

After calling attention to these statements the Report of the Syndicate then continues:--

“In the scheme of Examination for Honours in the Mathematical Tripos approved by Grace of the Senate on the 2nd of June, 1868, Heat, Electricity and Magnetism, if not introduced for the first time, had a much greater degree of importance assigned to them than at any previous period, and these subjects will henceforth demand a corresponding amount of attention from the candidates for Mathematical Honours. The Syndicate have limited their attention almost entirely to the question of providing public instruction in Heat, Electricity and Magnetism. They recognise the importance and advantage of tutorial instruction in these subjects in the several colleges, but they are also alive to the great impulse given to studies of this kind, and to the large amount of additional training which students may receive through the instruction of a public Professor, and by knowledge gained in a well-appointed laboratory.”

“In accordance with these views, and at an early period in their deliberations, they requested the Professors[34] of the University, who are engaged in teaching Mathematical and Physical Science, to confer together upon the present means of teaching Experimental Physics, especially Heat, Electricity and Magnetism, and to inform them how the increased requirements of the University in this respect could be met by them.”

“The Professors, so consulted, favoured the Syndicate with a report on the subject, which the Syndicate now beg leave to lay before the Senate. It points out how the requirements of the University might be “partially met,” but the Professors state distinctly that they “do not think that they are able to meet the want of an extensive course of lectures on Physics treated as such, and in great measure experimentally. As Experimental Physics may fairly be considered to come within the province of one or more of the above-mentioned Professors, the Syndicate have considered whether now or at some future time some arrangement might not be made to secure the effective teaching of this branch of science, without having resort to the services of an additional Professor. They are, however, of opinion that such an arrangement cannot be made at the present time, and that the exigencies of the case may be best met by founding a new professorship which shall terminate with the tenure of office of the Professor first elected. The services of a man of the highest attainments in science, devoting his life to public teaching as such Professor, and engaged in original research, would be of incalculable benefit to the University.”

The Report goes on to point out that a laboratory would be necessary, and also apparatus. It is estimated that £5,000 would cover the cost of the laboratory, and £1,300 the necessary apparatus. Provision is also made for a demonstrator and a laboratory assistant, and the Report closes with a recommendation that a special Syndicate of Finance should be appointed to consider the means of raising the funds.

The Professors in their Report to the Syndicate point out that teaching in Experimental Physics is needed for the Mathematical Tripos, the Natural Sciences Tripos, certain Special examinations, and the first examination for the degree of M.B. It appeared to them clear that there was work for a new Professor.

In May, 1869, the Financial Syndicate recommended by the above Report was appointed “to consider the means of raising the necessary funds for establishing a professor and demonstrator of Experimental Physics, and for providing buildings and apparatus required for that department of science, and further to consider other wants of the University, and the sources from which those wants may be supplied.”

The Syndicate endeavoured to meet the expenditure by inquiry from the several Colleges whether they would be willing to make contributions from their corporate funds, but without success.

“The answers of the Colleges indicated such a want of concurrence in any proposal to raise contributions from the corporate funds of Colleges by any kind of direct taxation that the Syndicate felt obliged to abandon the notion of obtaining the necessary funds from this source, and accordingly to limit the number of objects which they should recommend the Senate to accomplish.”

External authority was necessary before the colleges would submit to taxation for University purposes, and it was left to the Royal Commission of 1877 to carry into effect many of the suggestions made by the Syndicate. Meanwhile they contented themselves with recommending means for raising an annual stipend of £660 for the professor, demonstrator, and assistant, and a capital sum of £5,000, or thereabouts, for the expenses of a building.

The Syndicate’s Report was issued in an amended form in the May term of 1870, and before any decision was taken on it the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Atkinson, on October 13th, 1870, published “the following munificent offer of his grace the Duke of Devonshire, the Chancellor of the University,” who had been chairman of the Commission on Scientific Education.

“Holker Hall, Grange, Lancashire.

“MY DEAR MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR,--I have the honour to address you
for the purpose of making an offer to the University, which, if
you see no objection, I shall be much obliged to you to submit
in such manner as you may think fit for the consideration of
the Council and the University.

“I find in the report dated February 29th, 1869, of the
Physical Science Syndicate, recommending the establishment of
a Professor and Demonstrator of Experimental Physics, that the
buildings and apparatus required for this department of science
are estimated to cost £6,300.

“I am desirous to assist the University in carrying this
recommendation into effect, and shall accordingly be prepared
to provide the funds required for the building and apparatus as
soon as the University shall have in other respects completed
its arrangements for teaching Experimental Physics, and shall
have approved the plan of the building.

“I remain, my dear Mr. Vice-Chancellor,
“Yours very faithfully,
“DEVONSHIRE.”

By his generous action the University was relieved from all expense connected with the building. A Grace establishing a Professorship of Experimental Physics was confirmed by the Senate February 9th, 1871, and March 8th was fixed for the election.

Meanwhile who was to be Professor? Sir W. Thomson’s name had been mentioned, but he, it was known, would not accept the post. Maxwell was then applied to, and at first he was unwilling to leave Glenlair. Professor Stokes, the Hon. J. W. Strutt (Lord Rayleigh), Mr. Blore of Trinity, and others wrote to him. Lord Rayleigh’s letter[35] is as follows:

“Cambridge, 14th February, 1871.

“When I came here last Friday I found everyone talking about
the new professorship, and hoping that you would come. Thomson,
it seems, has definitely declined.... There is no one here in
the least fit for the post. What is wanted by most who know
anything about it is not so much a lecturer as a mathematician
who has actual experience in experimenting, and who might
direct the energies of the younger Fellows and bachelors into
a proper channel. There must be many who would be willing to
work under a competent man, and who, while learning themselves,
would materially assist him.... I hope you may be induced to
come; if not, I don’t know who it is to be. Do not trouble to
answer me about this, as I believe others have written to you
about it.”

On the 15th of February, Maxwell wrote to Mr. Blore:--

“I had no intention of applying for the post when I got your
letter, and I have none now, unless I come to see that I can do
some good by it.” The letter continues:--“The class of Physical
Investigations, which might be undertaken with the help of men
of Cambridge education, and which would be creditable to the
University, demand in general a considerable amount of dull
labour, which may or may not be attractive to the pupils.”

However, on the 24th of February, Mr. Blore wrote to the Electoral Roll:--

“I am authorised to give notice that Mr. John (_sic_) Clerk Maxwell, F.R.S., formerly Professor of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen, and at King’s College, London, is a candidate for the professorship of Experimental Physics.”

Maxwell was elected without opposition. Writing[36] to his wife from Cambridge, 20th March, 1871, he says:--

“There are two parties about the professorship. One wants
popular lectures, and the other cares more for experimental
work. I think there should be a gradation--popular lectures and
rough experiments for the masses; real experiments for real
students; and laborious experiments for first-rate men like
Trotter and Stuart and Strutt.”

While in a letter[37] from Glenlair to C. J. Munro, dated March 15th, 1871, he writes:--“The Experimental Physics at Cambridge is not built yet, but we are going to try. The desideratum is to set a Don and a Freshman to observe and register (say) the vibrations of a magnet together, or the Don to turn a watch and the Freshman to observe and govern him.”

In October he delivered his Introductory Lecture. A few quotations will show the spirit in which he approached his task.

“In a course of Experimental Physics we may consider either
the Physics or the Experiments as the leading feature. We may
either employ the experiments to illustrate the phenomena of
a particular branch of Physics, or we may make some physical
research in order to exemplify a particular experimental
method. In the order of time, we should begin, in the Lecture
Room, with a course of lectures on some branch of Physics
aided by experiments of illustration, and conclude, in the
Laboratory, with a course of experiments of research.

“Let me say a few words on these two classes of
experiments--Experiments of Illustration and Experiments of
Research. The aim of an experiment of illustration is to throw
light upon some scientific idea so that the student may be
enabled to grasp it. The circumstances of the experiment are
so arranged that the phenomenon which we wish to observe or to
exhibit is brought into prominence, instead of being obscured
and entangled among other phenomena, as it is when it occurs
in the ordinary course of nature. To exhibit illustrative
experiments, to encourage others to make them, and to cultivate
in every way the ideas on which they throw light, forms an
important part of our duty. The simpler the materials of an
illustrative experiment, and the more familiar they are to the
student, the more thoroughly is he likely to acquire the idea
which it is meant to illustrate. The educational value of such
experiments is often inversely proportional to the complexity
of the apparatus. The student who uses home-made apparatus,
which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has
the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt
to trust, and which he dares not take to pieces.

“It is very necessary that those who are trying to learn from
books the facts of physical science should be enabled by the
help of a few illustrative experiments to recognise these facts
when they meet with them out of doors. Science appears to us
with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is
not in lecture-rooms only, and by means of the electric light
projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena,
but that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of
science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by
water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there
is matter in motion.

“If, therefore, we desire, for our own advantage and for the
honour of our University, that the Devonshire Laboratory should
be successful, we must endeavour to maintain it in living union
with the other organs and faculties of our learned body. We
shall therefore first consider the relation in which we stand
to those mathematical studies which have so long flourished
among us, which deal with our own subjects, and which differ
from our experimental studies only in the mode in which they
are presented to the mind.

“There is no more powerful method for introducing knowledge
into the mind than that of presenting it in as many different
ways as we can. When the ideas, after entering through
different gateways, effect a junction in the citadel of the
mind, the position they occupy becomes impregnable. Opticians
tell us that the mental combination of the views of an object
which we obtain from stations no further apart than our two
eyes is sufficient to produce in our minds an impression of the
solidity of the object seen; and we find that this impression
is produced even when we are aware that we are really looking
at two flat pictures placed in a stereoscope. It is therefore
natural to expect that the knowledge of physical science
obtained by the combined use of mathematical analysis and
experimental research will be of a more solid, available, and
enduring kind than that possessed by the mere mathematician or
the mere experimenter.

“But what will be the effect on the University if men pursuing
that course of reading which has produced so many distinguished
Wranglers turn aside to work experiments? Will not their
attendance at the Laboratory count not merely as time withdrawn
from their more legitimate studies, but as the introduction of
a disturbing element, tainting their mathematical conceptions
with material imagery, and sapping their faith in the formulæ
of the text-books? Besides this, we have already heard
complaints of the undue extension of our studies, and of the
strain put upon our questionists by the weight of learning
which they try to carry with them into the Senate-House. If we
now ask them to get up their subjects not only by books and
writing, but at the same time by observation and manipulation,
will they not break down altogether? The Physical Laboratory,
we are told, may perhaps be useful to those who are going out
in Natural Science, and who do not take in Mathematics, but
to attempt to combine both kinds of study during the time of
residence at the University is more than one mind can bear.

“No doubt there is some reason for this feeling. Many of us
have already overcome the initial difficulties of mathematical
training. When we now go on with our study, we feel that it
requires exertion and involves fatigue, but we are confident
that if we only work hard our progress will be certain.

“Some of us, on the other hand, may have had some experience
of the routine of experimental work. As soon as we can read
scales, observe times, focus telescopes, and so on, this kind
of work ceases to require any great mental effort. We may,
perhaps, tire our eyes and weary our backs, but we do not
greatly fatigue our minds.

“It is not till we attempt to bring the theoretical part of
our training into contact with the practical that we begin to
experience the full effect of what Faraday has called ‘mental
inertia’--not only the difficulty of recognising, among the
concrete objects before us, the abstract relation which we have
learned from books, but the distracting pain of wrenching the
mind away from the symbols to the objects, and from the objects
back to the symbols. This, however, is the price we have to pay
for new ideas.

“But when we have overcome these difficulties, and successfully
bridged over the gulph between the abstract and the concrete,
it is not a mere piece of knowledge that we have obtained; we
have acquired the rudiment of a permanent mental endowment.
When, by a repetition of efforts of this kind, we have more
fully developed the scientific faculty, the exercise of this
faculty in detecting scientific principles in nature, and in
directing practice by theory, is no longer irksome, but becomes
an unfailing source of enjoyment, to which we return so often
that at last even our careless thoughts begin to run in a
scientific channel.

“Our principal work, however, in the Laboratory must be to
acquaint ourselves with all kinds of scientific methods, to
compare them and to estimate their value. It will, I think,
be a result worthy of our University, and more likely to be
accomplished here than in any private laboratory, if, by the
free and full discussion of the relative value of different
scientific procedures, we succeed in forming a school of
scientific criticism and in assisting the development of the
doctrine of method.

“But admitting that a practical acquaintance with the methods
of Physical Science is an essential part of a mathematical
and scientific education, we may be asked whether we are not
attributing too much importance to science altogether as part
of a liberal education.

“Fortunately, there is no question here whether the University
should continue to be a place of liberal education, or
should devote itself to preparing young men for particular
professions. Hence, though some of us may, I hope, see reason
to make the pursuit of science the main business of our lives,
it must be one of our most constant aims to maintain a living
connexion between our work and the other liberal studies of
Cambridge, whether literary, philological, historical, or
philosophical.

“There is a narrow professional spirit which may grow up among
men of science just as it does among men who practise any other
special business. But surely a University is the very place
where we should be able to overcome this tendency of men to
become, as it were, granulated into small worlds, which are
all the more worldly for their very smallness? We lose the
advantage of having men of varied pursuits collected into one
body if we do not endeavour to imbibe some of the spirit even
of those whose special branch of learning is different from our
own.”

Another expression of his views on the position of Physics at the time will be found in his address to Section A of the British Association, when President at the Liverpool meeting of 1870.