Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story-Maskelyne to Faraday   1 February 18511

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. | February 1, 1851.

My dear Mr. Faraday

I have been considering about a subject for my Friday Evening2, and I have come to the conclusion that one which I thought of some months ago will make a very good one, and though it has been alluded to by Grove in an Evening he gave3, I am not aware that it has been at all enlarged on in any of our Friday Evenings. It is the discovery by Pasteur4 of the two acids in Paratartaric acid [(]see Annales de Chimie 1850 p.565[)], the one turning the Polarised ray to the right, the other Polarising it circularly to the left. I think with Darkers6 Lime Light Apparatus I could make the Phenomena sensibly visible to the audience.

But my difficulty will be in getting the salts of the acid to exhibit. The Paratartaric acid has only once been produced & though Brodie has a little, it is but a little.

Might I ask if you are acquainted with Pasteur, and if so would you do me the great kindness of writing to him to ask if he could give me a little of the acid, or specimens of his salts? If this is imposing a task in any way unpleasant to you, I beg you will not think of doing so, but I apply to you as thinking that you are the most probable person to be acquainted with him whom I know.

The title of my Paper I suppose should be something of this sort “On the connection of chemical Forces with the Polarization of Light” - some facts might be added about Turpentine &c which would give the Lecture a general character such as would be represented by the above title, or perhaps I had better adhere to the single fact of Pasteur & call the Evening “On the mode in which certain Organic acids affect Polarized Light”.

Would you do me the kindness of selecting or altering in any way one of these titles. I feel that I am intruding on your kindness rather, in asking you for so much advice & assistance in a matter which ought to be entirely my own, but I know your interest in our Friday Evenings and I need not to say how I share it with you. I must make this my excuse for asking you for your aid in procuring specimens or information from M. Pasteur, and can only promise in return that I will do all in my power to make the Evening as little unworthy as I can of the Royal Institution.

I dare say you will do me the kindness of communicating the title of my paper, to Mr. Barlow.

I remain, Ever, | My dear Mr. Faraday, | Yours most faithfully | Nevil Story Maskelyne

To Michael Faraday Esq | &c &c &c

1
Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story-Maskelyne (1823-1911, DNB2). Mineralogist at Oxford.
2
Story-Maskelyne (1851), Friday Evening Discourse of 28 March 1851.
3
See Athenaeum,26 January 1850, p.106 for an account of Grove’s Friday Evening Discourse of 18 January 1850 “On some recent Researches of Foreign Philosophers”.
4
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895, DSB). Professor of Chemistry at Strasbourg University, 1849-1854.
5
Pasteur (1850).
6
William Hill Darker. Scientific instrument maker of 9 Paradise Street, Lambeth. Clifton (1995), 76.

Bibliography

CLIFTON, Gloria (1995): Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers 1550-1851, London.

PASTEUR, Louis (1850): “Recherches sur les propriétés spécifiques des deux acides qui composent l’acide racémique”, Ann. Chim., 28: 56-99.

STORY-MASKELYNE Mervyn Herbert Nevil (1851): “On the Connexion of Chemical Forces with the Polarization of Light”, Proc. Roy. Inst., 1: 45-9.

Please cite as “Faraday2376,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2376