Vol. 1 No. 2 (2017)
Historical Articles

Nurturing Genius: the Childhood and Youth of Kelvin and Maxwell

John Lekner
The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, and School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, P O Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand
Bio

Published 2017-10-06

Keywords

  • William Thomson (Lord Kelvin),
  • James Clerk Maxwell,
  • genius,
  • childhood,
  • youth,
  • history of physics
  • ...More
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How to Cite

Lekner, J. (2017). Nurturing Genius: the Childhood and Youth of Kelvin and Maxwell. Substantia, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.13128/Substantia-33

Abstract

William Thomson and James Clerk Maxwell, nineteenth century natural philosophers, were friends and colleagues (Thomson was Maxwell’s senior by seven years). This historical note gives a description of their early lives, with emphasis on the influence of their fathers and of Cambridge on their development.