The Cavendish Laboratory Archives

Historians of modern science are beset equally by the enormous amount of material which might be at their disposal and the great difficulty there often is in ascertaining where such material is preserved. The purpose of this note is to give a preliminary account of the unusually valuable collection of letters and manuscripts which is available in the Cavendish Laboratory, and which relates, for the most part, to three of the first four Cavendish Professors of Experimental Physics. The importance of a historical collection was recognized from the earhest days of the Laboratory, and in its first annual report 1 of 1875 James Clerk Maxwell recorded the acquisition of a thermometer from the Accademia del Cimento, some drawings of lines of magnetic force by Faraday, and a collection of Maxwell’s own demonstration models. The second annual report 2 records the gift of a large collection of W . H. Wollaston’s apparatus. All this reflects the fact that at this time Maxwell was much concerned with historical studies, notably in connexion with his edition of the electrical papers of Henry Cavendish. In 1879 Mrs Maxwell presented to the Laboratory her late husband’s library (which was to serve as the nucleus of a working hbrary for the Laboratory) and with this gift there came many of Maxwell’s original MSS. of his published books and scientific papers, as well as some of his unpublished lectures and addresses. Some of Maxwell’s scientific and personal correspondence must have come with these manuscripts ; other letters probably passed into the hands of his biographers, Lewis Campbell and Wilham Garnett, 3 who later returned these letters together with many others that they had acquired in the course of their work.