Faraday to Charles Richard Weld   21 August 1849

Royal Institution, | 21 Aug 1849

My dear Sir

I returned to town only a few days ago & now send you back Mr. Wards1 paper2 with the following remarks.

The paper does not carry conviction to my mind and as yet I retain my own view of revulsion &c.

The point whether a substance like lead or zinc, can, in a perfectly pure state & free from any ordinary magnetic substance assume either the magnetic or the diamagnetic condition according to the degree of magnetic force to which it is subjected - though assumed in the paper is not I think yet settled by the experiments in the paper: and would require far more care about even than appears from the paper to have been taken[.] Yet upon that point depends all the rest - the Sluggishness & contrary revulsions &c. I do not say it may not be so but as yet I have seen no results either in my own experiments or those of others that prove it to be so. Plucker himself I believe doubts whether a a perfectly pure substance can become both Magnetic & diamagnetic.

The hypothesis at the end is all dependant on this questionable point.

At pp.32-33 of the MS. the writer appears quite unaware of my suppositions in Nos. 2429, 2430, 2431 of my old Exp. Researches3 or of the Experiments & investigations made by Weber4 Plücker5 Reiss6 in support of that view[.]

Still I have no right to decide in a case of difference of conclusions where I am one of the parties concerned & I am anxious never to stand in the way of the publication of opinions which are contrary to my own - & therefore must leave it to others to judge whether the communication is proper for insertion in the Phil Transactions7.

Ever My dear Sir | Very Truly Yours | M. Faraday

R. Weld Esq | &c &c

1
William Sykes Ward (1813-1885, B6). Lawyer and Secretary of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 1840-1869.
2
W.S. Ward, “On some phenomena and motions of metals under the influence of Magnetic Force”, RS MS AP 32.22. This paper had been read to the Royal Society on 21 June 1849 and summarised in Proc.Roy.Soc.,1849, 5: 855-6.
3
Faraday (1846c), ERE21, 2429-31.
4
Weber (1848, 1849).
5
Plücker (1849e).
6
This would appear to be slip of the pen for Reich. See Reich (1849). Faraday links this set of references in Faraday (1850), ERE23, 2640.
7
The discussion of this paper was postponed on 18 October 1849 and again on 22 November 1849, but the paper was archived on 10 January 1850. RS MS CMB 90c.

Bibliography

FARADAY, Michael (1846c): “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.

FARADAY, Michael (1850): “Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Twenty-third Series. On the polar or other condition of matter”, Phil. Trans., 140: 171-88.

REICH, Ferdinand (1849): “On the Repulsive Action of the Pole of a Magnet upon Non-magnetic Bodies”, Phil. Mag., 34: 127-30.

Please cite as “Faraday2217,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2217