Trin. Lodge, Cambridge
My dear Sir
Your discovery is a door into a very wide chamber, though, to my eye, not fully open; but I shall rejoice to see you turn it well round on its hinges, as I know you will.
As to a name for the antithetical classes of bodies, I consider thus. I suppose you called one class dimagnetic from analogy with dielectric. I think you ought to have said diamagnetic; for the bodies through (dia) which electricity goes would have been called diaelectric, but that vowels in such cases coalesce. I think you may keep diamagnetic for this class2, and give to the opposite class a name implying that they rank along with magnetic bodies. I propose paramagnetic 3. Will it not do to talk of iron, nickel &c as paramagnetics and glass phosphorus &c. as diamagnetics? Then this new branch of science, for so of course it will soon become, will be Paramagnetism. I do not see any inconvenience in any of the obvious relations of the word. But it is difficult to judge of this without knowing the relations of the facts better than I do, and if you find that the words I have suggested will not work well (for that is the main thing) I will try if I can suggest better.
I give you joy at having such good reason to work hard. I hope you will not work too hard.
Yours very truly | W. Whewell
M. Faraday Esq
FARADAY, Michael (1846b): “Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Nineteenth Series. On the magnetization of light and the illumination of magnetic lines of force”, Phil. Trans., 136: 1-20.
FARADAY, Michael (1846d): “Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Twenty-first Series. On new magnetic actions, and on the magnetic condition of all matter - continued”, Phil. Trans., 136: 41-62.
Please cite as “Faraday1798,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on