At the age of ten James Clerk Maxwell began formal schooling at Edinburgh Academy. Even with poor attendance he still made phenomenal academic progress. Maxwell spent his spare time at school making curios drawings and strange diagrams. Maxwell was teased often by the other children, and obtained the nickname �Dafty� because he showed up to the first day of school in homemade shoes. Despite the social difficulties Maxwell faced he still published his first scientific paper when he was fourteen years old, this paper described a simple mechanical mean of drawing curves with a piece of string. James Clerk Maxwell entered Edinburgh University when he was sixteen, and studied Natural Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, and Mental Philosophy. In 1850 Maxwell entered Cambridge University to study mathematics. [2]