To William Francis   24th Oct 1850

Marburg. 24th Oct. 1850

Dear Sir,

Might I beg of you to put the address of Mr Faraday on the enclosed1 and have it dropped into the nearest post office for me?

I mentioned to you in my last that a memoir from Plücker was in the hands of Poggendorff. It is now published and occupies 47 pages of the Annalen.2 Plücker has taken Dr Beer as colleague in this new investigation, but an introduction from his own pen precedes it in which he endeavours to dispose of our first memoir;3 the last memoir4 he says arrived too late to be taken notice of. You will probably have received Poggendorff by this time, so it is needless for me to enter more fully into the precise nature of the paper. It simply describes a repetition and expansion of Plücker’s former experiments. A sufficient reply to those parts which refer to us shall be forthcoming in due time.5 – I shall devote a spare hour now and then to the translation of the memoir6 until I hear from you, if you dont want it the loss of time will be very trifling.

Very sincerely yours | John Tyndall.

via Frankreich!

The Editor of | The Philosophical Magazine | Red Lion Court | Fleet Street London

Francs 4 – 47

StBPL T&F, Authors’ letters

1

the enclosed: letter 0449.

2

I mentioned …. Plücker … the Annalen: Tyndall mentioned the article in letter 0448 (cited n. 9).

3

first memoir: cited letter 0392, n. 14 (German version) and letter 0395, n. 22 (English version).

4

the last memoir: their ‘last memoir’ (cited letter 0403, n. 2) was published in the Phil. Mag. in July, so Plücker may have seen it, but close to his publication time; the German version (cited letter 0458, n. 8) had not yet appeared.

5

A sufficient reply…time: Tyndall directly engaged Plücker’s work in ‘On Diamagnetism and Magnecrystallic Action’ (cited letter 0498, n. 6), published almost a year later.

6

the translation of the memoir: this is discussed over a number of letters; Tyndall sent the translation two months later with letter 0458. The letter here seems to be written chiefly to initiate discussion over a translation of Plücker.

7

via Frankreich … 4 – 4: via France! (German), was written at the top of the envelope; ‘francs 4 – 4’ in the bottom left corner. There is a Marburg postmark so, although the cost is given in francs, it was not posted in France.

Please cite as “Tyndall0450,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 30 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0450