Faraday to William Jerdan   27 March 1832

R Institution | March 27th 1832

My dear Sir

Will you let me call your attention for a moment to the Article Electricity & Magnetism at p 185 of your last Gazette¹. You there give an account of Nobili's² experiments and speak of them as if independent of or any thing but a repeti‑tion of mine. But if you had seen Nobilis paper you would have found that my name is on every page; that the experiments in it were a consequence of his having seen a copy of my letter to Paris³, which letter he translates into Italian & inserts⁴; & that he tried and obtained the spark with the magnet, because in my letter, I said that I had obtained the spark in a particular case. Nobili, so far from wishing to imply that the experiments & discovery are his; honors me by speaking of the "nuove correnti di Faraday"⁵[.]

I should not have noticed the matter but that in the Gazette it is said "researches of Mr Faraday which were rapidly tending to the same discovery" whereas they are my own experiments which having gone first to Paris & then to Italy have been repeated & studied by Signori Nobili and Antinori[.]

Perhaps the mistake may have arisen from the circumstance of the Number of the Antologia bearing date November 1831[.] But that date is no guide for the work was not published or printed even, till long after that; & Nobili's paper in it is dated January 1832.

Excuse my troubling you with this letter, but I never took more pains to be quite independant of other persons than in the present investigation; and I have never been more annoyed about any paper than the present by the variety of circumstances which have arisen seeming to imply that I had been anticipated⁶[.]

I am | Dear Sir | Very Truly Yours | M. Faraday