Carlo Matteucci to Faraday   12 March 1836

Florence 12 March 1836

Dear Sir

The very high esteem that I feel for you, and the friendship with which you are pleased to honour me could alone lead me, and even make it my duty to repel an unjust accusation brought against me in the Poggendorf[f] Journal.

Alluding to my memoir on Electro-Chemical force, published in the Annales de Physique et de Chimie¹ of Messieures Arago and Gay-Lussac, I am charged with plagiarism from your most highly celebrated works on Electro-Chemistry².

This imputation is too unworthy of my character, and there is no act of my life that can justify it.

If the humbleness of my means and the adversity to which I am subjected, did not allow me to give to that memoir all the extension that the subject required (which science will not regret after your works) let the oblivion into which it must needs fall be sufficient penalty.

In the Institut Paris 18th October 1834 the first notice is found in your admirable labors³ and it was before that epoch that the memoir directed to Mr Gay-Lussac was published, as the date will testify.

I am not aware that previously to this notice in the Institut any other had reached Italy.

Before this time I had learnt from a letter of Mr De la Rive dated 23d October 1834 that "Mr Faraday est actuellement tout à fait partisan de la theorie purement chemique de la pile"

This is the real state of things. I flatter myself that you will have the goodness to give to this letter the publicity that is required by consideration for my character, and by the high esteem and sincere friendship that I entertain towards yourself.

Believe me &c C. Matteucci

Michael Faraday &c | Professor of Chemistry | to the Royal Institution

Address: Michael Faraday &c | Professor of Chemistry | to the Royal Institution | London