PREFACE TO VOLUME I
The University of Cambridge has a deep interest both in the Author and in the Editor of the electrical investigations now presented in final form in this volume.
Henry Cavendish matriculated in the University on 18 Dec. 1749, from Hackney School. According to records preserved at Peterhouse he commenced residence there on 24 Nov. 1749, and resided very regularly and constantly as a Fellow-Commoner until 23 Feb. 1753, when he left without proceeding to a degree. Two others of the Cavendish family were at Peterhouse at the same time; Henry's younger brother Frederick who was entered 10 April, 1751, and also left without taking his degree; and his cousin Lord John Cavendish, fourth son of the Duke of Devonshire, afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was entered 21 Feb. 1750 and became M.A. in 1753. Among his contemporaries at Peterhouse, then as now a small society, were the Earl of Euston, afterwards as Duke of Grafton prominent in the writings of Junius, Gray the poet and also Mason[1], and the Greek critic Markland, who was Senior Fellow of the College at the time and always in residence.
These details are taken from a statement contributed in 1851 to Dr G. Wilson's Life of Cavendish[2] by Prof. F. Fuller, then Fellow and Tutor of Peterhouse.
James Clerk Maxwell graduated at Cambridge in Jan. 1854. After two years' resident activity at Cambridge, including election to a Fellowship at Trinity College, he was appointed in April, 1856 to the Chair of Natural Philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen. There he worked until 1860, when on the fusion of the two Aberdeen Universities he became Professor of Natural Philosophy in King's College, London. He resigned that Chair at Easter, 1865, left London the following year and settled down at his inherited home at Glenlair near Dalbeattie in Galloway. To quote his own words of Feb. 1866 (Life, 1882, by L. Campbell and W. Garnett, p. 344): " I have now my time fully occupied with experiments and speculations of a physical kind, which I could not undertake so long as I had public duties." The result has contributed, more than any other cause, to the modern revolution in the ideas and methods of physical science.
In October, 1870 William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, who had graduated as second wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman in Mathematics and a first class in Classics in 1829, and was elected in 1861 Chancellor of
