Collection comprising three manuscript notebooks of theoretical problems relating to mechanics compiled by James Clerk Maxwell mainly during his employment at King's College London, including exam questions on aspects of mechanics and geometry, 1860-1865; problems on the collision of elastic spheres and the dynamic relation between other solid bodies; the refraction of light; the relationship between heat and volume in materials; attraction between particles, 1860-1873; notes on the works of leading authorities on mathematics and physics including Arthur Cayley, Franz Neumann and Siméon Poisson, 1867-1873; bibliography of textbooks mainly on mechanics, [1860-1865]; list of scientific instrument suppliers, [1860-1865]; outline of the contents of Maxwell's Treatise on electricity and magnetism (1873).

The papers of John Edmund Bowen consist of two manuscript notebooks containing notes on lectures delivered by Professor Joseph John Thomson, Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge, 1911-1912. Bowen's notes consist of detailed summaries of Thomson's lectures on subjects including the discharge of electricity through gases, recombination of ions, recent developments in researches on light and electricity, scattering of electromagnetic radiation and the quantum theory of light.