Indeed, his original contributions to the higher mathematics began before he was fifteen years of age. He was a striking example of the fact that a great genius usually finds his work very early in life, and usually accomplishes something significant in it, at once the harbinger and the token of the future, before he is twenty-five. While Clerk Maxwell was at the Edinburgh Academy, Professor J. D. B. Forbes, in 1836, communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh a short paper by his youthful student on "A Mechanical Method of Tracing Oval Curves" (Cartesian Ovals). In spite of the prejudice that exists with regard to precocious genius and the distinct feeling that it is not likely to prove an enduring quality, Clerk Maxwell continued to do excellent original work all through his teens. When he was but eighteen, he contributed two important papers to the transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. One of these was on "The Theory of Rolling Curves," and the other on "The Equilibrium of Elastic Solids." These are now remembered, not only because of Clerk Maxwell's subsequent distinguished career, but because of their distinct value as contributions to science. Both of them demonstrate not only his ability to work out subtle mathematical problems at this very early age, but show the possession by him of a power of investigation for original work that stamps them as well worthy of consideration in themselves, quite apart from the repute of their author or the successful accomplishments of his subsequent life. With regard to one of those Edinburgh papers of Clerk Maxwell's eighteenth year, Prof. Guthrie Tait said "that in it he laid the foundation of one of the singular discoveries of his later life, the temporary double refraction produced in viscous liquid by sheering stress." After his magnificent mathematical training at Cambridge, it is not surprising that this academic career of great original work should be continued by contributions to science of ever-increasing importance. Immediately after his graduation, he read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society one of the few purely mathematical papers that he ever published. This had for its title, "On the Transformation of Surfaces by Bending." Expert mathematicians who read the paper, realized at once that there was a new genius in the field of mathematics. During the same year, the young Scotch mathematician took the first step in that series of electrical investigations which was to occupy so much of his attention in after-life, and which was to prove the source of his greatest inspirations. This consisted of the publication of an elaborate paper on Faraday's "lines of force."