“For some years previous to 1866, when Maxwell returned to Cambridge as Moderator in the Mathematical Tripos, the studies in the University had lost touch with the great scientific movements going on outside her walls. It was said that some of the subjects most in vogue had but little interest for the present generation, and loud complaints began to be heard that while such branches of knowledge as Heat, Electricity, and Magnetism were left out of the Tripos examination, the candidates were wasting their time and energy upon mathematical trifles barren of scientific interest and of practical results. Into the movement for reform Maxwell entered warmly. By his questions in 1866, and subsequent years, he infused new life into the examination; he took an active part in drafting the new scheme introduced in 1873; but most of all by his writings he exerted a powerful influence on the younger members of the University, and was largely instrumental in bringing about the change which has been now effected.” But the University possessed no means of teaching these subjects, and a Syndicate or Committee was appointed, November 25th, 1868, “to consider the best means of giving instruction to students in Physics, especially in Heat, Electricity and Magnetism, and the methods of providing apparatus for this purpose.” Dr. Cookson, Master of St. Peter’s College, took an active part in the work of the Syndicate. Professor Stokes, Professor Liveing, Professor Humphry, Dr. Phear, and Dr. Routh were among the members. Maxwell himself was in Cambridge that winter, as Examiner for the Tripos, and his work as Moderator and Examiner in the two previous years had done much to show the necessity of alterations and to indicate the direction which changes should take. The Syndicate reported February 27th, 1869. They called attention to the Report of the Royal Commission of 1850. The Commissioners had “prominently urged the importance of cultivating a knowledge of the great branches of Experimental Physics in the University”; and in page 118 of their Report, after commending the manner in which the subject of Physical Optics is studied in the University, and pointing out that “there is, perhaps, no public institution where it is better represented or prosecuted with more zeal and success in the way of original research,” they had stated that “no reason can be assigned why other great branches of Natural Science should not become equally objects of attention, or why Cambridge should not become a great school of physical and experimental, as it is already of mathematical and classical, instruction.”