My dear Faraday
I am much obliged to you for the very kind letter1 you favoured me with some weeks ago and you may easily imagine that its contents, vague and general as they were, proved highly interesting to me and set my curiosity on tiptoe. As far as I can judge your last discovery will eclipse all your former ones brilliant as they are.
The other day I had a letter from de la Rive, who I see entertains as yet the opinion that the action excited by magnetism upon polarized light is not directly due to that force but to a change brought about in the molecular arrangement of your glass by magnetism. It seems that the same view of the case is taken by the parisian philosophers. I am as yet too little acquainted with the particulars of your discovery as to be capable of forming a correct notion about it but the little I know of it makes me strongly believe that de la Rive and the french are wrong and you in the right. It appears to me that the prime focus of the case is such as to lead every impartial philosopher to the conclusion you have drawn from the fundamental phenomenon ascertained by you. How the molecular arrangement of a bit of amorphous glass can be changed by magnetical action in such a way as to make that medium act upon a beam of polarized light in the manner you have observed is a thing which, I openly confess it goes beyond my conception[.] I am however confident that you will not be long in bringing forward such an overwhelming mass of the strongest matter of fact evidence in favour of the view you have taken of the subject that all those little objections, which I am afraid do not entirely originate in the love of truth, will be easily reduced to what they really are. I hail in your discovery the beginning of a new era in the history of philosophy and am at any rate sure that it will ultimately lead to great things.
As to my little self I have of late turned entirely Chymist being almost exclusively occupied with researches on nitric acid and the other oxy-compounds of nitrogen, subjects which appear to be closely connected with my Ozone business. As to nitric acid I am now almost quite sure that it does not exist and that what Chymists call the first hydrate of that imaginary compound is NO<4> + HO<2> and not NO<5> + HO much less NO<6> + H. The normal nitrates exempl. gr. nitrate of baryta, nitrate of lead are to me NO<4> + BaO<2>, NO<4> + PbO<2> &c. Our poor late friend Daniell would be very sorry to hear such heretical doctrine. Before long I hope to be able to reassume some voltaic researches regarding electrolysis having a notion that much is to be done yet in that branch of science in spite of your beautiful doings in that line. Whether I shall succeed in establishing what I think at present to be true, I can of course not say; I am however confident that my endeavours will not prove entirely fruitless.
They say that Dr. Neef[f]2 of Francfort has made a discovery establishing also a connection between light and electricity3, but I dont know the particulars about it. I confess however that I doubt as yet of the correctness of the fact.
Pray present my best compliments and Mrs. Schoenbein's also to your Lady and believe me
Your's | most faithfully | C.F. Schoenbein
Bâle Dec. 30, 1845.
Address: Doctor M. Faraday | &c &c &c | Royal Institution | London
NEEFF, Christian Ernst (1845): “Ueber des Verhältniss der elektrischen Polarität zu Licht und Wärme”, Pogg. Ann., 66: 414-34.
Please cite as “Faraday1812,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on