Maxwell left the
Academy and began attending class at the
University of Edinburgh. Having the opportunity to attend Cambridge after his first term, Maxwell decided instead to complete the full three terms of his undergraduate studies at Edinburgh. The main reason for this was that Cambridge was too far from home, and he would only have the opportunity to see his father twice a year. Another reason was Maxwell's concern for his future. He wanted to become a scientist, but jobs in science were rare at this time, and it would have been much more difficult to obtain a lecturing post at a university as prestigious as Cambridge. Accordingly, Maxwell completed his studies at
Edinburgh in
natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and mental philosophy under
Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet. In his eighteenth year he contributed two papers for the
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh — one of which,
On the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids, laid the foundation for an important discovery of his later life: the temporary
double refraction produced in
viscous liquids by
shear stress.
In 1850, Maxwell left for
Cambridge University and initially attended
Peterhouse, but eventually left for
Trinity College where he believed it was easier to obtain a
fellowship. At Trinity, he was elected to the secret society known as the
Cambridge Apostles. In November 1851, Maxwell studied under the tutor
William Hopkins (nicknamed the "
wrangler maker"). A considerable part of the translation of his electromagnetism equations was accomplished during Maxwell's career as an undergraduate in Trinity.
In 1854, Maxwell graduated with a degree as second wrangler in
mathematics from Trinity (i.e. scoring second-highest in the final mathematics examination) and was declared equal with the senior wrangler of his year in the more exacting ordeal of the Smith's prize examination. Immediately after taking his degree, he read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society a novel memoir,
On the Transformation of Surfaces by Bending. This is one of the few purely mathematical papers he published, and it exhibited at once to experts the full genius of its author. About the same time, his elaborate memoir,
On Faraday's Lines of Force appeared, in which he gave the first indication of some of the electrical investigations which culminated in the greatest work of his life.
From 1855 to 1872, he published at intervals a series of valuable investigations connected with the
Perception of Colour and
Colour-Blindness, for the earlier of which he received the
Rumford medal from the Royal Society in 1860. The instruments which he devised for these investigations were simple and convenient in use. For example,
Maxwell's discs were used to compare a variable mixture of three primary colours with a sample colour by observing the spinning "colour top." In 1856, Maxwell was appointed to the chair of Natural Philosophy in
Marischal College, Aberdeen, which he held until the fusion of Aberdeen's two colleges in 1860.
In 1859, he won the
Adams prize in Cambridge for an original essay,
On the Stability of Saturn's Rings, in which he concluded the rings could not be completely solid or fluid. Maxwell demonstrated stability could ensue only if the rings consisted of numerous small solid particles, which he called "brickbats". He also mathematically disproved the
nebular hypothesis (which stated that the
solar system formed through the progressive
condensation of a purely
gaseous nebula), forcing the theory to account for additional portions of small solid particles.
In 1860 he became a professor at
King's College London. In 1861, Maxwell was elected to the
Royal Society. He researched
elastic solids and pure geometry during this time.
