-1”1 To be found in full in The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell Vol.ii (ed. Harman, 1995) p.568f.
2 Cf. Maxwell (1954) p.9.
3 In L&E, pp.207-234.
4 The Ferguson Scholarships were open to young graduates of all four Scottish universities and were thus adjudged to identify the brightest new intellects upon the academic scene.
5 B&C, p.56.
6 Quoted in B&C, p.59. Cf. Knott (1911) p. 71. Smith’s letter to his father (21.10.66) records Tait’s official and more diplomatically-worded appraisal of the young student’s examination papers: “No. 4 [Smith] is possessed of particular power, but his papers lack polish”. B&C (p.66) justly comment that, by this time, “… his pre-eminence in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy was attested by the possession of the highest distinction in Scotland open to a student of his standing”.
7 B&C, p88f. Smith’s reference to hearing “Plücker, the celebrated mathematician,” is of especial interest: his comment that Plücker was evidently “not acquainted with Quaternions” indicates that Tait had by 1867 initiated Smith into this advanced form of differential calculus. Cf. Knott (1911) p.14: “Tait was one of the very few who really appreciated the immense value of Hamilton’s work. Many who with gay confidence began to read the Lectures lost heart and fell back from Quaternion heights into Cartesian valleys, where the paths seemed simpler in their artificial symmetry”.
8 As Black and Chrystal (B&C, p.66) observe, a trifle quaintly: “The exact sciences were at this time, and remained for many years, the leading profane interest of his mind, and there was more than one moment in his subsequent career at which it seemed that he might end his days as a physicist or a mathematician, and might be received into the placid paradise of scientific research as the colleague and equal of such men as Klein and Kelvin, who were both his friends”.
9 B&C p.45.
10 B&C, p.44; C111: Fuller had written: “Would such a situation suit your views, or are you still bent on ecclesiastical preferment? Please to return me an answer immediately and say nothing to anybody about it.”
11 Cf. B&C, p.64: “In the history of a man’s development the five years after he is turned twenty are usually critical. From this time date the beginnings of his most important friendships, the formation and first consolidation of his views on great questions, the starting-point of his worldly career. This, at any rate, was the case with Smith …”.
12 Ib., p.65.
13 Thomas Martin Lindsay became Professor of Church History in 1872 at the Free Church College in Glasgow and eventually was Principal there.
14 C100.
15 B&C, p.101.
16 William Thomson (1824-1907), professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow from 1846-99, was later knighted for of his crucial contribution to solving the practical difficulties of laying the first telegraph cable under the Atlantic and subsequently was honoured with a peerage, becoming Lord Kelvin in 1892.
17 Knott (1911) p. 22 n.1.
18 There had been pressure since the early 1840s for improvements in academic scientific education and (in England) for the admission of natural philosophy to the curriculum. Maxwell was largely instrumental in gaining approval for radical reform of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge to include physics. Financial constraints delayed the setting up of both Tait’s laboratory in Edinburgh and the Cavendish at Cambridge. See Harman ed. (1995) pp.33ff.; Knott (1911) p.22.
19 An account of Tait’s education is given in C. G. Knott’s biography (1911).
20 Harman ed. (1995) p.516.
21 See Goldman (1983, esp. chs.4-6) for a detailed and perceptive description of Maxwell’s education.
22 Maxwell’s post in Aberdeen disappeared when the two Colleges, Marischal and King’s, were amalgamated in 1860. David Thomson, Professor of Natural Philosophy at King’s and Maxwell’s senior in age and experience by many years, secured the Natural Philosophy chair for himself.
23 Cf. B&C, p.37.
24 The post should not be confused with that of laboratory technician (“mechanical assistant”) the duties of which were carried out for many years by “Old Lindsay”, of whom Stevenson writes with affection in his 1886 article, “Some College Memories” (Stevenson, 1924).
25 TransRSE, vii, pp.79-99 (reproduced in L&E, pp.44-66).
26 Harman ed. (1995) p.516. The syntax of the first sentence is obscure. Thomson and Tait were by now familiarly known to their colleagues and students as T & T´. Similarly, their joint treatise on Natural Philosophy, which was first published in its initial (unexpanded) form in 1867, was eponymously called T & T´ by those familiar with its contents. Occasionally, Maxwell humorously, yet also disparagingly, uses the symbol T´´ to refer to Professor John Tyndall, the double prime being used in mathematics to denote the second rank. Maxwell shortly becomes still more familiar with Tait, opening his letters to the latter with the vocative O T´.
27 Black and Chrystal give a decidedly fulsome evaluation (B&C, p.117): “This paper was the result of important experimental work carried out in Professor Tait’s laboratory, and it is not too much to say that it places its author in the ranks of scientific discoverers. As a contribution to Physical Science it is regarded by eminent authorities as a classical exposition of its subject”. Cf. Tait’s unsigned obituary notice of WRS (in Nature, 12.4.1894): “What Smith might have done in science is shown by his masterly paper … rapidly written in the brief intervals of leisure afforded by his dual life as simultaneously a Student in the Free Church College, and Assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh University”. Smith’s paper is essentially theoretical: it states (L&E, p.62): “Verifications have been sought … the experiments were executed by students in the Physical Laboratory …”; but no results are given and one is almost bound to infer from the carefully-chosen language that Smith’s paper was rushed out before those experiments were completed – if indeed they ever were carried through completely.
28 Maxwell’s provisional views on the nature of the atom are presented in his article “Atom” in EB9 vol.ii, pp. 36-49. See chapter vii of his Treatise for illustrations of such “lines of induction” and his gracious reference (Maxwell, 1954, vol.i, p.185 fn.) to Smith’s work.
29 B&C, p.112.
30 C107. There are also references later to “nerves”: cf. C123 (Nov., 1869).
31 C108.
32 Both parents, not unnaturally, showed extreme solicitude over Smith’s health – often to his intense irritation. Thus we find him writing from Heidelberg in July, 1869: “My sprain as I said before is quite better. It was never more than slight. You so often get uneasy on these points that I don’t think you understand my letter-writing principles. In writing to you I always tell everything even at the risk of making the letter all about myself. You always seem to be afraid that – in the case of unwellness for example – I am keeping back what I think would vex you. But really I never do this”.
33 These social visits alarmed Smith’s father at first and WRS had to write (November, 1868) reassuring his parents that drinking whisky and water with Tait after dinner was not a sign of incipient debauchery (C104).
34 Tait’s Sketch of Thermodynamics (1868). Cf. C150.
35 C106. In October, Smith wrote to his mother: “There was a splendid arch across the heavens yesterday of exceeding brightness. Tait went up to the University to examine it with the spectroscope and distinguished at least two lines (this is for Papa)”. Obviously William Pirie Smith was already familiar with the new technique of spectroscopy, which had immense implications for atomic physics.
36 C160a. “Tait and Steele” refers to Tait’s first published book, The Dynamics of a Particle, written in association with a former Peterhouse colleague, W.J. Steele, who died before the book was completed and issued in 1856.
37 C150 (Nov. 1868).
38 Sachs was of Jewish parentage but converted to Christianity on coming to this country from Berlin. After studying at New College, he was appointed to teach Hebrew at Aberdeen Free College from 1846 and was designated Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Literature there in 1855.
39 Cf. B&C, p.115f.
40 C127.
41 He writes to his father on December 3: “Do you think I should ask Davidson and McG[regor] to stop the thing?” (C127).
42 A minority disapproved of the practice – James Clerk Maxwell being one. Dr Smeaton (Smith’s teacher of NT Exegesis) “sent a very good letter which would have been a very good certif. but that he ended by saying that his rule is never to interfere about Prof[essorship]s and never to give a certificate.” (C128).
43 C130.
44 E.g. C129 (to his father): “I have today [28.12.69] a very nice note from Ritschl expressing pleasure at my having applied to him and hoping for my success. Enclosed was a testimonial as follows: Mr WRS attended my lectures … and I have had the pleasure in repeated conversations with him of learning to know in him a man of the most lively zeal for Science, of many-sided knowledge and of unusual readiness of Spirit (versatility?) [ausserordentlicher Gewandtheit des Geistes]”.
45 Smith wrote (C128): “From Davidson and McGregor very strong – I should say absurdly strong – Davidson’s in particular is not only strong but generous in its character”.
46 B&C, p.120.
47 C161 (to his mother): “The students are proposing also to move [in support]. How they can do so is not yet clear.”
48 CUL Add. Mss 7449 (no ref.). The fourteen members of Smith’s Tutorial Class submitted their own equally glowing reference [ibid.] which refers, inter alia, to “the clear and scientific way in which you have laid open to us the leading principles and structure of the Hebrew Language; thereby imparting to what might otherwise have been dry and difficult detail, an interest and ease which could not fail to enlist our attention and awaken our imagination”.
49 C128.
50 B&C, p,125: “[The sermons] might have been delivered by any orthodox country minister to any Scottish congregation”. Cf. Riesen’s paper (in Essays, ed. Johnstone., 1995): “Scholarship and piety: the sermons of William Robertson Smith”.
51 Maxwell’s letter to Tait is dated November 7. WRS’s reply is dated November 10. Allowing for the probability that Tait communicated by telegram with Smith, the phrase in the latter’s letter. “as you will remember” can only mean that the naming of Ñ had arisen earlier and did not come out of the blue from Maxwell at this juncture.
52 Harman ed. (1995) p.577.
53 Thomson, despite his long and friendly collaboration with Tait, found it impossible to come to terms with his friend’s enthusiasm for quaternions.
54 Ib., p.577f.
55 C78
56 Smith’s Note on Prof. Bain’s Theory of Euclid 1.4 was published in TransRSE (vii, pp.176-179) in 1872. It may be found in L&E, pp.67-79.
57 This facet of Smith’s personality echoes the criticism made by “Scotulus” regarding preoccupation with detail: the view of a fellow-student (Lilley, 1920) that WRS suffered from having been deprived of the “intercourse of a local public school” may be pertinent. Smith was highly sociable but conspicuously lacked the full range of schoolboyish mischief that both Maxwell and Tait displayed.
58
Cf. Harman ed. (1995) p.590 [Jan. 1871]: “Dr T´, Still harping on
that Nabla! The present Nablody is on -1”
59 He wrote numerous articles during the 1890s on the physics of golf. See Knott (1911, p.58).
60 Cf. Huxley (1900) vol.i, p.362f., for a parallel account (by Huxley’s son, Leonard) of this holiday.
61 Herman Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-94), the eminent German physicist and pioneer of physiological psychology, had been a close friend of Tait, Kelvin and Maxwell since 1860. He is allusively referred to in Maxwell’s correspondence to Tait as H2.
62 J.F. McLennan, a young lawyer whom WRS had already met and who was to play a major role in stimulating Smith’s interest in totemism and early religion, wrote to him (D 451) from Edinburgh in September, 1871: “I had Gibson with me at St Andrews on Friday last and he accompanied me on my way to Edinburgh as far as Kirkcaldy. We had in our little room a gathering of philosophers on the Friday night for pipes &c. and I wish you had been there. Huxley, Tulloch, Spencer Baynes, Tait, Brown, Gibson and Pat Alexr. were of the Coy and there was some diverting talk”.
63 Punch (which gave good coverage to the Meeting) provided a résumé in verse of Thomson’s address. Though lacking Maxwell’s skill, this is of interest in commenting on the President’s reference to life on earth having possibly originated from meteorites: Far fetched such an hypothesis may seem,/ But science (teste Thomson) holds, no dream./ Though sure a Scotch Professor’s bound to doubt/ What so leaves Genesis and Moses out (vol.lxi.,1871, p.62).
64 Punch poked ponderous fun at the use of the term: “In the opening Address of one of the Presidents of Sections at the Meeting of the British Association, a reference was made to Thomson’s Theory of Dissipation. The question, therefore, has been asked, whether the Association is going to investigate the phenomenon of Fast Life. May Sir William Thomson, by his Theory of Dissipation, teach us how to lessen its practice” (ib., p.86).
65 RepBA, 1871, Notices and Abstracts, p.5.
66 The full text of the Nablody is to be found in Knott (1911) pp.171-3., though the facsimile of Smith’s Hebrew superscription contains one or two errors in the pointing.
67 The whole poem (but without the Hebrew) is also given in Nature, vol. iv, p.261.
68 Quoted, from Tyndall’s “Heat a mode of motion”, by Charles Taylor in Brock et al., (eds.) 1981.
69 From an article originally in The Scots Observer, 8.12.1888; reprinted in Knott (1911) p.293.
70 D713.
71 The book is referred to by WRS in a letter of 7.11.1868 (C150) to his mother: “Tait published a small book on heat this week & gave me a copy – a rather nice thing”.
72
Cf. Harman (1995) p. 710: Maxwell, scrupulously fair as always, had written
to Tait (12.2.72) –“As for C., though I imbibed my 
cs
[thermodynamics] from other sources, I know that he is a prime source …
I mean to take such draughts of Clausiustical Ergon [sc. ‘work’] as
to place me in that state of disintegration in which one becomes conscious of
the increase of the general sum of Entropy”.
73 RepBA, 1871, Notices and Abstracts, p.30.
74 See Ch.IX below. It was first published anonymously in 1875.
75 RepBA, 1871, loc. cit. (the original paper by Smith and Lindsay is not extant).
76
Cf. ibid.: “Democritus supposes that the larger atoms fall faster, impinge
on lighter particles, and produce a vortex motion 
)”.
77 In Knott (1911) p.244f.
78 “Headstone” is a cipher for Peter Tait (Tête = Tait; stone = petra = Peter).
79 An allusion to Tait’s paper, “Sensation and Science”, in Nature, vol.iv.
80 A reference to Paradoxical Philosophy (1878) by Tait and Balfour Stewart, a sequel to The Unseen Universe. Maxwell criticised it severely in Nature.
81 The reference is to Mill’s depressive illness as described in his Autobiography (1924) ch.5 passim. Amongst other sources of despair, Mill (p.123) was “seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility [ie Maxwell’s ‘essentially finite variety’] of musical combinations”.
82 That is, Baron Verulam, Viscount St Alban’s.
83 The reference is of course to the celebrated musicians at Solomon’s court: cf. I Chron. 15.6 and 25.6.
84 The identity of the “visitor” is obscure – the most likely candidate is Ernst Mach (1838-1916) who was professor of Physics at Prague (not Dresden) at the time and whose interests were Maxwellian in range. Mach was fascinated by scientific epistemology and published Erkenntnis und Irrtum in 1905. He studied the effects of supersonic projectiles and gave his name to Mach numbers.