Aberdeen was the meeting place of the British Association
in 1859. Wilham Rowan Hamilton was there, full of his new
method of quaternions; also Tait, now professor of mathe-
matics at Belfast, and a disciple of Hamilton's. Maxwell was
introduced to Hamilton by Tait. He had doubtless already
studied the new method, from which he assimilated many ideas
which figure largely in his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.
At Aberdeen there are two colleges, Marischel College and
King's College, each of which had then a Faculty of Arts. An
agitation for a change had been in progress for some years;
in i860 it ended in a fusion of the two faculties of arts. The
Kings College professor of physics was David Thomson, of
whom you doubtless have never heard, yet Thomson was
retained, and the gifted Clerk Maxwell was left out. However
the Crown gave him compensation in the form of a pension.
Just then Forbes resigned the chair of physics at Edinburgh;
the two friends Maxwell and Tait were rival candidates, and
Tait was successful. The contest did not change their friend-
ship. Maxwell was immediately appointed to the correspond-
ing chair in King's College, London.
