Ɛpsilon

Gideon Algernon Mantell1 to Faraday   27 March 18512

My dear Dr Faraday,

I thank you very, very much, for your kindness is presenting me with a separate copy of another series of your splendid researches3; believe me I appreciate your remembrance of me most highly.

Prof. Silliman4 & his son Dr. B.S.5 (of Connecticut) come to town tomorrow on their way to the Continent, and they are most anxious to see you if but for a few minutes. They will therefore attend the meeting of the R.I.6 tomorrow evening, if I can get tickets for them7. I have written to Mr Barlow on their behalf; but as the wife8 & sister9 of Dr B.S. & two friends10 accompany them, I must beg, borrow, or steal, tickets for the whole if possible.

Prof. Silliman comes to me from Oxford tomorrow & stops at my house: on Monday he & his son go to Paris.

Ever dear Dr Faraday | with the greatest regard | Gideon Algernon Mantell

19 Chester Square | Thursday

1
Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790-1852, DSB). Geologist.
2
Dated on the basis of the reference to Silliman mentioned in Curwen (1940), 266.
3
Faraday (1851b, c, d, e), ERE24, 25, 26 and 27.
4
Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864, DSB). Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Yale Medical School from 1813. Founder and editor of Am.J.Sci.
5
Benjamin Silliman (1816-1885, DSB). Professor of Medical Chemistry and Toxicology at the University of Louisville, 1849-1854 and an editor of Am.J.Sci.
6
Story-Maskelyne (1851), Friday Evening Discourse of 28 March 1851.
7
Faraday took the tickets to Mantell himself on 28 March 1851. See Curwen (1940), 266.
8
Susan Silliman, née Forbes. She had married Benjamin Silliman Jr in 1840. Fulton and Thomson (1968), 222.
9
Actually the sister of Susan Silliman. Fulton and Thomson (1968), 222.
10
According to Fulton and Thomson (1968), 222 these were Walter S. Church, a grandson of Benjamin Silliman Sr, and George Jarvis Brush (1831-1912, DAB), an assistant of Benjamin Silliman Jr at the University of Louisville.

Bibliography

CURWEN, E. Cecil (1940): The Journal of Gideon Mantell Surgeon and Geologist, London.

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 “Faraday2400,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2400