JAMES CLERK MAXWELL 273
mathematically by Newton and Huyghens, were susceptible
of so simple a practical construction.
Descartes, Newton, Huyghens! What names to appear
in the discussion of a schoolboy's mathematical discovery!
Maxwell acquired the important friendship of Forbes.
His researches at this time were not restricted to geometry.
He became interested in the properties of jellies and gutta-
percha, apparently through reading Forbes' recent papers
on the theory of the movement of glaciers containing dis-
cussions of the effect of pressure on solid, liquid and
viscous bodies.
Maxwell's original contributions to human knowledge
retarded his progress at school. Owing to the diversion of
time from regular studies he did not win the mathematical
medal in 1846. In the next and last year he was again
first in mathematics and also in English and almost first in
Latin. Maxwell was never heard to have regretted his
classical education. He repeatedly said in later years that
he considered the discovery of an author's meaning without
help, except from a grammar and dictionary, was one of
the best methods of training the mind.
When he was fifteen he was often absent from school
owing to delicate health. He had become interested in
Newton's rings and the polarization of light, so he was
taken by his uncle to see Nicol, the inventor of the polarizing
prism. Later in the same year, when he was sixteen, he
entered Edinburgh University and attended the courses
there for three years. He worked under very little super-
vision. He diligently attended the classes on logic,
metaphysics and morals, and acquired the knowledge of
general ideas that made him an educated besides a scientific
man. At the age of seventeen he made copious notes
under the influence of the metaphysician Hamilton on the
properties of matter, space, time, force and sensation.
While the notes are without particular originality, they help
to show the development of Maxwell's precision of scientific
thought and how he succeeded in avoiding the identification
of scientific concepts with reality which destroyed the value
of the philosophical ideas of nearly all of his scientific