We know James Clerk Maxwell primarily for Maxwell’s equations. While I personally have been working only several decades with Maxwell’s equations, there are many researchers who have been working with his equations for their entire professional careers. But what do we know about Maxwell the person? Where are all the biographies of this person described by Richard Feynman as the greatest physicist of the 19th century, the one person who, after the Civil War of the same century is long forgotten, will still be shining brightly?

There are very few biographies of Maxwell. The most comprehensive biography was written by a life-long friend, Lewis Campbell with help from William Garnett. Published in 1882, shortly after Maxwell’s death, it is today found only in the rare book rooms of large libraries. It is considered a primary historical reference on Maxwell.

In December of 1996, I gained access to a copy. As I started reading it, I was moved to engage in a major project: to digitize the book and to convert the images into word processor files (by means of OCR, Optical Character Recognition, software) so that others might enjoy the book as well.

The book is in three parts: 1) A description of his life, 2) A description of his scientific works, 3) A collection of his poetry. This summary focuses on anecdotal excerpts from the first part.

We start with Campbell’s description of the beginning:

James Clerk Maxwell was born at No. 14 India Street, Edinburgh, on the 13th of June 1831. His parents were John Clerk Maxwell, one of the Clerks of Penicuik, in Midlothian, and Frances, daughter of R. H. Cay, Esq. of N. Charlton, Northumberlane. Excepting a daughter, Elizabeth, who had died in infancy, James was their only child.

James Maxwell’s father, John Clerk Maxwell lived with his mother at No. 14 India Street until her death in 1824. He married in 1826. After the birth of their son, James, they moved to "Glenlair", the newly built home on the family estate in rural Kirkcudbrightshire. Illustrated with drawings by James Maxwell’s cousin, Mrs. Blackburn, taken from water-color paintings she had made at the time of each incident, the youngster’s intense curiosity is described by Campbell:

Not much dragging was needed . . . to get Mr. Clerk to explain any mechanism to "boy," and "show him how it doos." Henceforward this was the chief pleasure of his life, until the order was reversed, and the son took hardly less delight in explaining Nature's Mechanics to the father.

. . . I had been told by his cousin, Mrs. Blackburn, that throughout his childhood his constant question was, "What's the go o' that? What does it do?" Nor was he content with a vague answer, but would reiterate, "But what's the particular go of it?" And, supported by such evidence, I may hope to win belief for a reminiscence which I might else have shrunk from mentioning. I distinctly remember his telling me, during his early manhood that his first recollection was that of lying on the grass before his father's house, and looking at the sun, and wondering. To which may be added the following anecdote, which has been communicated to me by Mrs. Murdoch [James’s nurse] . . . , "When James was a little boy of two years and a half old, I had given him a new tin plate to play with. It was a bright sunny day; he held it to the sun, and the reflection went round and round the room. He said 'Do look, Maggy, and go for papa and mamma.' I told them both to come, and as they went in James sent the reflection across their faces. It was delightful to see his papa; he was delighted. He asked him, 'What is this you are about, my boy?' He said, 'It is the sun, papa; I got it in with the tin plate.' His papa told him when he was a little older he would let him see the moon and stars, and so he did."

. . . in the accompanying woodcut, taken from a contemporary sketch of a "barn ball" at the Harvest-home of 1837, the boy of six years old (instead of looking at the dancer) is totally absorbed in watching the bow of the "violino primo," unshakably determined to make out "the go of that" some day or other. The spirit which afterwards welcomed the acoustic discoveries of Helmholtz was already at work.

Another playmate and partaker of his whims must be remembered here. This was a terrier of the "Mustard" kind, called Toby, Tobin, Tobs, or Tobit, according to the moment's humour. Toby was always learning some new trick (performed for his wages of home-made biscuit after dinner), and neither he nor James were ever tired of repeating the old ones. To mention this is not mere trifling, for his power over animals and perception of their ways was a permanent characteristic, and he found a scientific use for it at a later time in inspecting the eyes of dogs with a view to certain optical investigations.

In his youth, Maxwell sufferred a tragedy, the intensity of which we can only imagine today:

I may before concluding this chapter make explicit mention of the loss which coloured the greater part of James Clerk Maxwell's existence, by leaving him motherless in his ninth year. Mrs. Clerk Maxwell died on the 6th of December 1839. There was extant until after Professor Maxwell's death a memorandum or diary kept at the time by her husband, describing the heroic fortitude which she had shown under the pain of her disease, and of the operation by which they had attempted to save her. Anćsthetics were then unknown.

In a later footnote, Campbell comments:

When James, being eight years old, was told that his mother was now in heaven, he said, "Oh, I'm so glad! Now she'll have no more pain." Already his first thought was for another.

Maxwell’s early education was undertaken by his mother. After the her death, his father first attempted to have James taught at home.

As the months went on after Mrs. Maxwell's death, the question of education began to press. The experiment of a tutor at home, which had been tried in the autumn preceding that event, was continued until November 1841, but by that time had been pronounced unsuccessful. The boy was reported slow at learning, and Miss Cay after a while discovered that the tutor was rough. He was probably a raw lad, who having been drilled by harsh methods had no conception of any other, and had failed to present the Latin grammar in such a way as to interest his pupil. He had, in short, tried to coerce Clerk Maxwell. Not a promising attempt! Meanwhile the boy was getting to be more venturesome, and needed to be—not driven, but led. And it may be conceded for the tutor's behoof that, when once taken the wrong way, his power of provocation must have been, from a certain point of view, "prodigious." A childhood without some naughtiness would be unnatural. One evening at Glenlair, just as the maid-servant was coming in with the tea-tray, Jamsie blew out the light in the narrow passage, and lay down across the doorway.

There is one of Mrs. Blackburn's drawings, which throws a curious light on the situation at this juncture. Master James is in the duck-pond, in a washtub, having ousted the ducks, to the amusement of the young "vassals," Bobby and Johnny, and is paddling himself (with some implement from the dairy, belike), out of reach of the tutor, who has fetched a rake, and is trying forcibly to bring him in. Mr. Clerk Maxwell has just arrived upon the scene, and is looking on complacently, though not without concern. Cousin Jemima has been aiding and abetting, and is holding the leaping-pole, which has probably served as a boat-hook in this case.

The episode of the tutor was not a happy one. I would omit the fact, as well as the name, were I not convinced that this first experience of harsh treatment had effects which long remained,—not in any bitterness, though to be smitten on the head with a ruler and have one's ears pulled till they bled might naturally have operated in that direction,—but in a certain hesitation of manner and obliquity of reply, which Maxwell was long in getting over, if, indeed, he ever quite got over them.

What happened in the interval after the first lesson (in the space behind the second classroom) is best indicated in the words of the Psalmist:—"They came about me like bees."

"Who made those shoes?" was the first question; but it was never easy to get a direct answer from Maxwell, least of all on compulsion. Brought thus to bay, he had recourse to his natural weapon—irony. His answer was soon ready, and his tormentors might make of it what they list. In the broadest tones of his Corsock patois he replied to one of them,

"Div ye ken, 'twas a man, And he lived in a house, In whilk was a mouse."

He returned to Heriot Row that afternoon with his tunic in rags and "wanting" the skirt; his neat frill rumpled and torn;—himself excessively amused by his experiences, and showing not the smallest sign of irritation. It may well be questioned, however, whether something had not passed within him, of which neither those at home nor his schoolfellows ever knew.

The nickname of "Dafty" which they then gave him clung to him while he remained at school, and he took no pains to get rid of it. His "quips and cranks" were taken for "cantrips," his quick, short, elfin laughter (the only sign by which he betrayed his sensitiveness), was construed into an eldritch noise. Never was cygnet amongst goslings more misconstrued.

Maxwell’s education was enhanced by frequent visits by his father, to whom he had become very close. Here, we also see a hint of things to come:

The library at his new home was more extensive than at Glenlair. He came to know Swift and Dryden, and after a while Hobbes, and Butler's Hudibras. Then if his father was in Edinburgh they walked together, especially on the Saturday half-holiday, and "viewed" Leith Fort, or the preparations for the Granton railway, or the stratification of Salisbury Crags; always learning something new, and winning ideas for imagination to feed upon. One Saturday, February 12, 1842, he had a special treat, being taken "to see electro-magnetic machines."

Campbell summarizes a letter written by Maxwell at age 13 to his father:

After describing the Virginian Minstrels, and betwixt inquiries after various pets at Glenlair, he remarks, as if it were an ordinary piece of news, "I have made a tetrahedron, a dodecahedron, and two other hedrons, whose names I don't know." We had not yet begun geometry, and he had certainly not at this time learnt the definitions in Euclid; yet he had not merely realised the nature of the five regular solids sufficiently to construct them out of pasteboard with approximate accuracy, but had further contrived other symmetrical polyhedra derived from them, specimens of which (as improved in 1848) may be still seen at the Cavendish Laboratory.

In 1846, at age 14, Maxwell published "On the description of Oval Curves, and those having a plurality of Foci" in the Proceedings of the Royal Edinburgh Society. Campbell includes the paper with its incredible geometric proofs. However, geometry is not his only interest.

During the winter of 1846-47, James was unusually delicate. He was often absent from school, and seems not to have attended the meetings of the [Edinburgh Royal] Societies. But of these his father was sure to give him a faithful report. He was certainly more than ever interested in science. The two subjects which most engaged his attention were magnetism and the polarisation of light. He was fond of showing "Newton's rings"—the chromatic effect produced by pressing lenses together—and of watching the changing hues on soap bubbles.

At age 16, Maxwell’s father enrolled him in the University of Edinburgh:

These three years—November 1847 to October 1850—were impartially divided between Edinburgh and Glenlair. He was working under but slight pressure, and his originality had the freest play. His studies were multifarious, but the subjects on which his thoughts were most concentrated during these years were—1. Polarised light, the stereoscope, etc.; 2. Galvanism; 3. Rolling curves; 4. Compression of solids. That he early felt the necessity of imposing a method on himself will appear from the letters. His paper on Rolling Curves was read before the Edinburgh Royal Society on February 19th, 1849, by Professor Kelland (for it was not thought proper for a boy in a round jacket to mount the rostrum there); that on the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids in the spring of 1850.

In a letter dated July 1848 to Campbell, Maxwell describes his home "laboratory":

I have regularly set up shop now above the wash-house at the gate, in a garret. I have an old door set on two barrels, and two chairs, of which one is safe, and a skylight above, which will slide up and down.

On the door (or table), there is a lot of bowls, jugs, plates, jam pigs [i.e., jars], etc., containing water, salt, soda, sulphuric acid, blue vitriol, plumbago ore; also broken glass, iron, and copper wire, copper and zinc plate, bees' wax, sealing wax, clay, rosin, charcoal, a lens, a Smee's Galvanic apparatus, and a countless variety of little beetles, spiders, and wood lice, which fall into the different liquids and poison themselves. I intend to get up some more galvanism in jam pigs; but I must first copper the interiors of the pigs, so I am experimenting on the best methods of electrotyping. So I am making copper seals with the device of a beetle. First, I thought a beetle was a good conductor, so I embedded one in wax (not at all cruel, because I slew him in boiling water in which he never kicked), leaving his back out; but he would not do. Then I took a cast of him in sealing wax, and pressed wax into the hollow, and black-leaded it with a brush; but neither would that do. So at last I took my fingers and rubbed it, which I find the best way to use the black lead. Then it coppered famously. I melt out the wax with the lens, that being the cleanest way of getting a strong heat, so I do most things with it that need heat.

The decision to transfer to Cambridge was difficult, and as we see in this passage, it was not always clear just what "Laws" Maxwell would be studying.

There had been a lingering expectation . . . that [James] would follow his father's profession, and become a member of the Scottish Bar. And although he himself felt, as he told me at the time, that it was "another kind of laws" he was called upon to study, the practical result of this conviction was slow in asserting itself. The fact that in going to Cambridge he decided against the profession which his friends had destined for him made the step a more serious one than it might have otherwise been. The close and constant intercourse between father and son made the parting more difficult. James's delicate health would count heavily amongst the reasons contra, and certain floating prejudices about the "dangers of the English universities," Puseyism, infidelity, etc., had then considerable hold, especially on the Presbyterian mind. James himself was patient, and had hitherto decided nothing for himself. Only when Tait and Allan Stewart were already at Cambridge, my brother Robert destined for it, and myself at Oxford, his own voice was added to those which had long been urging the claims of Cambridge, and then they prevailed.

His undergraduate education at Cambridge lasted from 1850 to 1854. But, as we see here, his activities were not entirely academic.

His chief outdoor amusements were walking, bathing, and sculling. He was upset in his "funny" in May 1851—a trifling accident to so expert a swimmer. "But," writes a contemporary Cantab, "he richly deserved it. For he tried to take off his jersey after 'shipping' his oars. The oscillations of the funny became rapidly more extensive, in spite of his violent efforts at equilibrium."

He tried some odd experiments in the arrangement of his hours of work and sleep. But his father disapproved of such vagaries, and they were not continued long—although not entirely abandoned even when he had rooms in college. The authority just quoted says, "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 lay perdus behind their sporting-doors to have shots at him with boots, hair-brushes, etc., as he passed."

In a July 1853 letter to Campbell, Maxwell writes of a brief vacation visit to the Rev. C. B. Taylor:

I intended to return on the 18th June, but on the 17th I felt unwell, and took measures accordingly to be well again—i.e. went to bed, and made up my mind to recover. But it lasted more than a fortnight, during which time I was taken care of beyond expectation (not that I did not expect much before). When I was perfectly useless, and could not sit up without fainting, Mr. Tayler did everything for me in such a way that I had no fear of giving trouble. So did Mrs. Tayler; and the two nephews did all they could. So they kept me in great happiness all the time, and detained me till I was able to walk about, and got back strength. I returned on the 4th July.

Later that year, Maxwell took the intensive Tripos examination in mathematics, in which he placed second, thus becoming a "Second Wrangler", rather than the coveted "Senior Wrangler":

James Clerk Maxwell’s position as Second Wrangler and equal Smith's Prizeman, gave deep satisfaction to his friends in Edinburgh. Any lurking wish that he had been Senior was silenced by the examples of William Thomson and Charles Mackenzie, as others have been since consoled with the examples of Maxwell and Clifford.

Maxwell continued with his graduate education at Cambridge until 1856 when, at age 24 he accepted a professorship at University of Aberdeen. This was desirable as now he was geographically, as well as emotionally, close to his father. However, fate soon showed a different hand as Maxwell describes in this letter to Mrs. Blackburn dated 3 April 1856:

DEAR MRS. BLACKBURN—My father died suddenly to-day at 12 o'clock. He had been giving directions about the garden, and he said he would sit down and rest a little as usual. After a few minutes I asked him to lie down on the sofa, and he did not seem inclined to do so, and then I got him some ether, which had helped him before.

Before he could take any he had a slight struggle, and all was over. He hardly breathed afterwards.

He used often to talk to me about this, which has come at last, and he seemed fully to have made up his mind to it and to be prepared for it. His nights have sometimes been troubled, and last night I was with him the whole time trying to get him into a comfortable sleep, which did not come till light.

While at Aberdeen he met and, in 1858, married Katherine Mary Dewar, daughter of the principal of Marischal College at Aberdeen. Campbell has very little to say about Mrs. Maxwell. Several historians speculate that Campbell, who perferred writing about the postive aspects of a topic, simply did not have much he wished to write about Mrs. Maxwell. Then in 1860, Maxwell’s position was eliminated in a "Fusion of the Colleges". He applied unsuccesfully for a postion at Uuniversity of Edinburgh. He then applied successfully for the vacant Professorship of Natural Philosophy at King's College, London.

While Maxwell’s scientific work is described in detail in Part II of the biography, Campbell does make mention of some of Maxwell’s considerable experimental work. The following describes work done while at King’s College:

Another very important experimental investigation conducted by Maxwell about this period was the determination of the ratio of the electromagnetic and electrostatic units of electricity, for the purpose of comparing this quantity with the velocity of light. As this investigation will be again referred to in Part II., it is only necessary to say here that the experiment amounts to a comparison between the attractions of two electric currents flowing in coils of wire, and the attraction or repulsion between two metal plates which have each received a charge of electricity. Maxwell had pointed out that, in accordance with his theory, the ratio of the units should be equal to the velocity of light, and the value obtained by him was intermediate between the extreme values obtained for that velocity by previous observers. The experiment was the outcome of his theory of the constitution of the space in the neighbourhood of magnetic and electric currents, by which he accounted for all the then known phenomena of magnetism and electricity, and which he published in a semi-popular form in the Philosophical Magazine in 1861 and 1862.

Maxwell also did considerable work on the kinetic theory of gases, with a probability density function bearing his name. While at King’s College, Maxwell had the opportunity to get to know Faraday quite well, with Campbell citing the following incident:

On one occasion he [Maxwell] was wedged in a crowd attempting to escape from the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution, when he was perceived by Faraday, who, alluding to Maxwell's work among the molecules, accosted him in this wise—"Ho, Maxwell, cannot you get out? If any man can find his way through a crowd it should be you."

Maxwell conducted a number of experiments at home quantitatively exploring color perception and his kinetic theory of gases. Mrs. Maxwell must have been very patient.

When experimenting at the window with the colour-box (which was painted black, and nearly eight feet long), he excited the wonder of his neighbours, who thought him mad to spend so many hours in staring into a coffin. This was also the scene of his well-known experiments on the viscosity of gases at different pressures and temperatures. For some days a large fire was kept up in the room, though it was in the midst of very hot weather. Kettles were kept on the fire, and large quantities of steam allowed to flow into the room. Mrs. Maxwell acted as stoker, which was very exhausting work when maintained for several consecutive hours. After this the room was kept cool, for subsequent experiments, by the employment of a considerable amount of ice.

Maxwell sufferred several more illnesses in this period:

At the beginning and at the close of the King's College period Maxwell suffered from two severe illnesses, both of a dangerously infectious nature, and in both of them he was nursed by Mrs. Maxwell. In September 1860 he had an attack of smallpox at Glenlair, which he was supposed to have caught at the fair, where "Charlie" [their horse] was bought. During this illness his wife was left quite alone with him—the servants only coming to the door of the sick-room. He has been heard to say that by her assiduous nursing on this occasion she saved his life.

The second illness was in September 1865, also at Glenlair. Maxwell had been riding a strange horse, and got a scratch on the head from a bough of a tree; this was followed by an attack of erysipelas, which brought him very low. Mrs. Maxwell was again his nurse, and to listen, as he insisted on doing, to her quiet reading of their usual portion of Scripture every evening, was the utmost mental effort which he could bear.

Maxwell left King’s college in 1865.

The years which followed the resignation of his post at King's College were spent, for the most part, at Glenlair, the house being at this time enlarged in general accordance with his father's plan. And Maxwell took advantage of this retirement to embody some of the results of his investigations in substantive books. The great work on Electricity and Magnetism, although not published till 1873, was now taking definite shape, and the treatise on Heat, which appeared in 1870, had been undertaken as a by-work during the same period.

Campbell describes some travels during this period:

Maxwell's retirement was not by any means unbroken. There was a visit to London in the spring of every year. And in the spring and early summer of 1867 he made a tour in Italy with Mrs. Maxwell. They had the misfortune to be stopped for quarantine at Marseilles, and his remarkable power of physical endurance and of ministration were felt by all who shared in the mishap. True to the associations of his early days, he became the general water-carrier, and in other ways contributed greatly to the alleviation of discomforts that were by no means light.

We met accidentally at Florence, and I remember his mentioning two things as having particularly struck him amongst the innumerable objects of interest at Rome. He had looked at the dome of St. Peter's with an eye of sympathetic genius, and his ear for melody had been satisfied by "the Pope's band." He acquired Italian with great rapidity, and amused himself with noticing the different phonetic values of the letters in Italian and English. One of his chief objects in learning the language was to be able to converse with Professor Matteucci, whose bust now stands in the Campo Santo at Pisa. During the same tour he took special pains to improve his acquaintance with French and German. The only language he had any difficulty in mastering was Dutch.

In 1871 Maxwell was induced to return to university life as the first Chair of Experimental Physics to oversee the construction of and subsequent research in the Cavindish Laboratory at Cambridge. The laboratory was completed in 1874. Campbell cites an unatributed source describing Maxwell at work:

In performing his private experiments at the laboratory, Maxwell was very neat-handed and expeditious. When working thus, or when thinking out a problem, he had a habit of whistling, not loudly, but in a half-subdued manner, no particular tune discernible, but a sort of running accompaniment to his inward thoughts. . . . He could carry the full strength of his mental faculties rapidly from one subject to another, and could pursue his studies under distractions which most students would find intolerable, such as a loud conversation in the room where he was at work. On these occasions he used, in a manner, to take his dog into his confidence, and would say softly, "Tobi, Tobi," at intervals, and after thinking and working for a time, would at last say (for example), "It must be so: Plato (i.e. Plateau), thou reasonest well." He would then join in the conversation.

Maxwell also had a playful side, often playing practical jokes.

On one occasion, after removing a large amount of calcareous deposit which had accumulated in a curiously oolitic form in a boiler, Maxwell sent it to the Professor of Geology with a request that he would identify the formation. This he did at once, vindicating his science from the aspersion which his brother professor would playfully have cast on it.

Maxwell’s final work was biographical, An Account of the Electrical Researches of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, F.R.S., between 1771 and 1781. As described by Campbell:

At my last meeting with him,—it was in his house at Cambridge, in the year 1877,—in the midst of some discursive talk, he took the MS. of this book out of a cabinet, and began showing it to me and discoursing about it in the old eager, playful, affectionate way, just as with the magic discs in boyhood, or the register of the colour-box observations at a later time, in the little study at Glenlair. "And what," I said, "of your own investigations in various ways?" "I have to give up so many things," he answered, with a sad look, which till then I had never seen in his eyes. Even before this, as it now appears, he had felt the first symptoms of the inexorable malady, which in the spring of 1879 assumed a dangerous aspect, and killed him in the autumn of that year.

And later, Campbell comments:

After his recovery from the attack of erysipelas at Glenlair in 1865, Maxwell's health appears to have been fairly good until the spring of 1877. He then began to be troubled with dyspeptic symptoms, especially with a painful choking sensation after taking meat. He consulted no one for about two years. But one day in 1877, on coming into the Laboratory after his luncheon, he dissolved a crystal of carbonate of soda in a small beaker of water, and drank it off. A little while after this he said he had found how to manage so as to avoid pain.

. . .

On the 2d of October 1879, in the midst of great weakness and of great pain, he was told by the late Dr. Sanders of Edinburgh, who had been summoned to Glenlair, that he had not a month to live. From that moment he had only one anxiety, the same which had for so long been his chief care—to provide for her comfort, whom he now saw that he must leave behind.

He returned to Cambridge; but he was so weak as to be hardly able to walk from the train to a carriage. Under the diligent care of Dr. Paget his most painful symptoms were considerably relieved, and his friends began to entertain fond hopes of his recovery. But his strength gradually failed, and at length it was evident to all that the disease could not be stayed.

And every biography must have an end. As described by Maxwell’s long time friend Colin Mackenzie:

A few minutes before his death, Professor Clerk Maxwell was being held up in bed, struggling for breath, when he said slowly and distinctly, "God help me! God help my wife!" he then turned to me (Mr. Mackenzie) and said, "Colin, you are strong, lift me up;" He next said, "Lay me down lower, for I am very low myself, and it suits me to lie low." After this he breathed deeply and slowly, and, with a long look at his wife, passed away.

Maxwell appears to have died of an abominal cancer, an attending physician stating that it was the same illness which took Maxwell’s mother 40 years before.

Prior working with Maxwell’s biography, to me Maxwell was just a set of equations, all be it, a set of equations upon which I and many others have based their entire careers. But now, knowing more about Maxwell, he can live on in our hearts as well as in our minds. While our equations may be no better as a result, perhaps we, ourselves, will now be a little richer with knowledge of the life of one of the giants upon whose shoulders we stand.

Copyright © 2000 Sonnet Software, Inc.
Last modified: July 28, 2000

[Sonnet Home Page]