Charles-Gaspard De La Rive1 to Faraday   15 February 1819

Dear Sir,

I should have answered much sooner to your kind letter2 if I had anything interesting and worthy your notice to write to you; but our poor Republic is quite barren on that respect and we are obliged to ask from you and your learned London Drs some chemical intelligence for which we are exceedingly grateful. – However Saussure3 has sent your Society a paper on the spontaneous decomposition of starch4 which is not destitu[t]e of interest and I hope you will give an extract of it in your excellent Journal. – I read with great pleasure and interest your paper on Sonorous tubes 5 and I am ready to adopt your conclusion on the immediate cause of the Phenomenon; however I think that the explanation might be generalised and extended to sounds produced on the same principle and by the same kind of vibrations. Such are in my opinion sounds produced in tubes terminated by a bell in which a drop of quicksilver is introduced and which are strongly heated till the mercury is completely evaporated. – The sound there produced appears to me of the same nature and the vibration of the same kind, but I confess the cause may be different – I am sorry, my dear Sir you would not take notice of this experiment, I remember I wished very much to repeat it in your presence but you did not seem to pay a great attention to it6. I think however that it is of some interest and might lead to the explanation of many sonorous Phenomena, as Nicholson7 pointed it out in the translation he gave of my paper8 in his Journal a few years ago9. – Your experiments on that subject afforded me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction and are quite nice and full of ingenuity. – Have you done anything new of oxides of silver10 it is a subject very worthy of your attention. I am waiting for something very new and very interesting from you on those oxides which are but little known. – What is your opinion on the experiments of Thenard11 and on these oxidations he performs with the deutoxide of Barytes12; it is curious enough but the experiments must be repeated over and over again before we can draw any good conclusion from them? – I take the liberty you see, my dear Sir, to put you some questions and I hope you will be kind enough as to send me your answer when your labour will allow you the time to do it. It will be a double pleasure for me to hear from you and to receive some chemical news from the original source of science. – What is become of Sir Humphry? does he mean to pay us a visit this Summer; you ought my dear Sir to come to meet him at Geneva; your friends would have great pleasure in seeing you and among them I hope you shall always reckon

Your most devoted | G. De la Rive

Geneva, this 15th February 1819.

Give If you please my best compliments to Mr Newman and Dr Marcet13 when you see them14.


Address: Mr Faraday | Royal Institution | Albermarle Street | Londres

Charles-Gaspard De La Rive (1770–1834, DSB). Swiss chemist.
Faraday to De La Rive, 6 October 1818, letter 88, volume 1.
Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure (1767–1845, DSB). Swiss chemist.
Saussure (1819).
Faraday (1818a) which cited De La Rive’s work.
Presumably this occurred when De La Rive was in England in 1818. See Anon (1834), 311.
William Nicholson (1753–1815, ODNB). Man of science.
De La Rive, C.-G. (1802a).
De La Rive, C.-G. (1802b).
Faraday (1818b).
Louis Jacques Thenard (1777–1857, DSB). Professor of Chemistry at Paris.
Thenard (1818a, b, c, d).
Alexander John Gaspard Marcet (1770–1822, ODNB). Physician at Guy's Hospital.
Faraday to De La Rive, 20 April 1820, letter 111, volume 1, is Faraday’s reply.

Bibliography

ANON (1834): “Notice Biographique Sur M. Le Prof G. De La Rive”, Bibl. Univ., 55: 303-38.

SAUSSURE, Nicolas Théodore de (1819): “Observations sur la décomposition de l’amidon à la température atmosphérique par l’action de l’air et de l’eau”, Phil. Trans., 109: 29-58.

Please cite as “Faraday0094a,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 28 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0094a