William Mitchinson Hicks, 1850-1934

William Mitghinson Hicks was born on September 23, 1850, at Launceston, the elder son of Samuel Hicks, a schoolmaster of that town. He received his earlier education at a private school in Devonport and in 1870 went up to Cambridge after gaining an Exhibition at St. John’s College. In the mathematical tripos of 1873 he reached the place of seventh wrangler, and is described in the Calendar then as a Scholar of St. John’s. The next year was an important one in the history of Physics in Cambridge. The Cavendish Laboratory was opened, with Clerk Maxwell as first Professor, and a small number of men who had taken the mathematical tripos gathered under him as students there. Sir J. J.Thomson tells us in the Commemoration Volume of Maxwell that Hicks was the first of these students, and that he was followed by Gordon, Chrystal, Saunders, MacAlister, Fleming, Glazebrook, Schuster, Niven, and Poynting—a truly distinguished band. Hicks’s close college and lifelong friend, William Garnett, who was fifth wrangler in the same year, was appointed demonstrator.