Peter Guthrie Tait was born on 28 April 1831 at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh and was educated first at Dalkeith grammar school and, after the death of his father, when his mother moved to Edinburgh, at Circus Place School, for a year, and then, for 1841, at the Edinburgh Academy where he competed against, and made life-long friends with James Clerk Maxwell and Lewis Campbell. Tait attended one session (1847-48) at Edinburgh University before being admitted at Peterhouse in 1848. He studied under the celebrated coach, William Hopkins, and under Frederick Fuller, both also at Peterhouse, and was Senior Wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1852 in which year he was elected a Fellow of the college. In the two and a half years during which he held his fellowship he collaborated with William John Steele on 'A treatise on the dynamics of a particle', which, owing to Steele's early death, was largely the work of Tait. From 1854 to 1860 Tait was Professor of Mathematics at Queen's College Belfast, and it was there that he married Margaret Archer Porter, sister of of William Archer Porter and of James Porter, later Master of Peterhouse (1876-1901). In 1860 Tait was elected Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh, over the heads of James Clerk Maxwell, Edward John Routh and Frederick Fuller. His publications and honours were very numerous. He died on 4 July 1901. For a full account see Crosbie Smith, ‘Tait, Peter Guthrie (1831-1901)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36407, accessed 8 June 2015] See also The Sex', no. 17, Michaelmas Term 1902, pp. 6-9.