NIGEL Dewar Gibb (Letters, February 3) states that it is to Scotland’s shame that James Clerk Maxwell’s name is virtually unknown in his home country. Not so in my school, Aireborough Grammar in Guisley, West Yorkshire, in the 1950s. Ernest Tillotson, the senior physics teacher, used to delight in telling of Clerk Maxwell’s professor who had wrestled with a certain problem for several weeks to no avail. Mischievously, he slipped it into a final exam paper for his students. James provided the answer during the exam – sheer genius.

David Waters,

187 Carlisle Road, Kirkmuirhill, South Lanarkshire.