The Origins of Clerk Maxwell's Electric Ideas, as described in familiar Letters to W. Thomson

Abstract

James Clerk Maxwell, in his days of early development, made a practice of communicating his progress in ideas by informal letters to his scientific friends G. G. Stokes and W. Thomson, who were in the habit of preserving their correspondence. The record, so far as revealed in the letters to Stokes, has been published in volume 2 of Prof. Stokes' Scientific Correspondence. The letters which are here printed have emerged among Lord Kelvin's manuscript remains. They had been arranged apparently by Prof. S. P. Thompson when he was preparing his biography of Lord Kelvin's practical activities. I find that they had been examined by myself when a project of publishing Lord Kelvin's scientific correspondence was contemplated, after the manner of that of Stokes; which afterwards proved to be impracticable, as the material had largely been skimmed over.