Thomas Colby to Faraday   16 March 1834

Ordnance Survey Office | Dublin 16th March | 1834

My dear Sir,

Mr. Kane, a young man who is Professor of Chemistry at the Apothecaries Hall in Dublin, called on me this morning to ask me respecting a report that you had obtained Fluorine in a separate state¹. He said he looked into the Athenaeum and the Journals and had found no account of the discovery. He wished for this information previously to publishing an account of his recent experiments, by which he thinks he has succeeded in obtaining it. He says he has produced a brown substance, which according to his statements of the tests he applied to it, should be pure Fluorine. I told him, I understood before I left London that you had obtained Fluorine in a separate state², by the decomposition of Fluoric acid; but that your account had not been read before I left London and that I had not heard the particulars of the discovery: and I further promised to write to ask you where it was given for publication? He said he had obtained it first, from the Fluoride of Potassium by repeating an experiment proposed by Davy³; but with the additional precaution of examining the interior of the mass of Fluoride subjected to the decomposition.- And that he had afterwards obtained it from other Fluorides.- He is making experiments on the means of confining and preserving it in a separate state.

Since writing the foregoing I have had an opportunity of making some enquiries respecting Mr. Kane, and I find he is a young man struggling in the pursuit of knowledge against want of money, and want of patronage.

He is therefore deserving of encouragement, and to be noticed by a few lines from you, informing him where he may read the account of your discovery will be gratefully received: and open a communication which he is too humbly situated to commence, but which may hereafter contribute to the advancement of chemical science in Ire<<land.>>

I remain | My dear Sir | Very truly | Thos. Colby