Christian Friedrich Schoenbein to Faraday   20 December 1840

My dear Faraday

Only to show you that I am still alive and have not entirely forgotten my dear friend in the Royal Institution I am taking up my pen to write a few lines. - Having these last six months been obliged to lecture a good deal I could not find much leisure-time for carrying on my investigations on "ozone"¹ and for that reason I am unable to communicate to you any scientific news from me. After Christmas I shall however set to work again and renew my attempts at insulating the principle which produces the electrical smell.

Berzelius wrote me the other day and invited me to con‑tinue my researches on the subject alluded to in so flattering and encouraging a manner that I cannot help complying with the wishes expressed by such an authority². The swedish philo‑sopher is much inclined to adopt the views I have taken of the subject and thinks it highly probable that there exists an electrolytic body being composed of ozone and hydrogen and invariably associated with water just in the same way as, accor‑ding to the most recent results of Mr. B., chloride of sodium is always found to be accompanied by small traces of bromide and Jodide of Sodium. Berzelius says in his letter that if I should happen to succeed in insulating ozone such a result would constitute one of the most brilliant discoveries ever made in chemical science. My object now is to get at my disposal a pile of great electrolysing power, a pile, of course, being constructed after Grove's principle³. My pecuniary means being of rather a limited nature I do not know yet how to arrive at my end, a pile being such as I think it ought to be in order to enable me of working out my subject, would perhaps cost 80 - 100 úSter. Do you think it likely that some institution or some private individual in London or England would be inclined to lend me for some time an apparatus of the description desired?

I have not yet seen abstracts from your late paper⁴ on the source of voltaic electricity in the german scientific periodicals. Is it perhaps not yet published? The germans and Poggen‑dorff at the head of them are getting daily deeper involved into the meshes of the contact-theory. I am rather anxious to see your recent results made known in my country as soon as possible. If you could send me a copy of it I would myself translate the memoir and make some proper comments upon its contents.

Pray pay my best respects to Mrs. Faraday and believeme

Your's | most sincerely | C.F. Schoenbein

Bâle Dec. 20th 1840.

Address: Doctor Faraday | &c &c &c | Royal Institution | London