Dear John.
You will see that in my last2 I had anticipated the questions contained in your little note which reached me in Gottingen a day or two after I had posted mine.3 I returned to Marburg yesterday the Semester there being closed and I having a few things yet to settle before I leave Marburg on a journey with my Brother John. I visited Gauss as I promised and the record of the interview you will some day read in my Journal,4 it was to me a very interesting one. Weber introduced me to Prof. Poggendorf who came on a visit from Berlin, I saw very little of him but he seemed a very pleasant old gentleman and gave me a kind invitation to visit him in Berlin. I have not yet finished the calculations of some experiments on the Magnetic Inclination5 made in Gottingen and shall defer them to another time. They have made me a member of a Mathematical Kräntzchen here in Marburg,6 with Stegmann Schell Gerling, Hessel Kohlrausch & others. next Saturday I expect to lay before them the results of said experiments in Gottingen and am preparing for the same – Weber has just been making some new experiments on the polarity of Bismuth, which will interest you I have only once seen the apparatus7 and can not explain its merits fully, but I will try, what I miss or mistake you will for yourself perhaps supply or correct –
on reconsideration I will wait a week and make a few experiments with Knoblauch on the subject in order to compare the result with your memoir8 on the subject. By-the-bye send my Brother a few more copies of your memoirs if you can spare them I have used up those I brought
What steps have you taken towards trying for the Cork professorship?9 Enclosed I send you a little note10 I received the other day from Stegman which pleased me much. It was accompanied by two large volumes of a rather scarce and certainly valuable work.11 Poor January Searle he wrote to me for £2012 the other day, just before receiving yours. I could not spare it and had to tell him so. I would rather have given him £50 than have written the letter you posted.13 but I sincerely believe I did right and that in spite of the present pain it will have cost him, that in the end it will be better. I hope so at any rate
Thine affectionately | T. A Hirst
R1 MS JT/1/H/493
[17 August 1852]: Hirst returned to Marburg after two weeks in Göttingen on 16 August (Hirst, ‘Journals’, 15 August 1852).
my last: letter 0650.
your little note: letter missing.
record of the interview: see Hirst, ‘Journals’, 12 August 1852.
experiments on the Magnetic Inclination: Hirst worked with Weber on experiments ‘on the determination of Magnetic inclination’ while visiting Göttingen (see letter 0650).
made me… Marburg: correct spelling Kränzchen. This was a small, informal mathematical society in Marburg. In his journal, Hirst recorded that it met weekly ‘in the open air’ (3 July 1852). He was invited only after he completed his dissertation.
Weber … apparatus: Hirst discussed Weber’s experiments and described the apparatus in letter 0658.
your memoir: Tyndall’s ‘On the Polarity of Bismuth’ (cited letter 0525, n. 2). Hirst reported the results of his experiments in letter 0658.
the Cork professorship: Hirst likely meant Galway. Tyndall had told Hirst of his intention to apply for a professorship at Galway in early July (letter 0638). The possibility of applying for a professorship at Cork had arisen almost a year earlier, in October 1851 (see letter 0551).
a little note: the note appears in Hirst, ‘Journals’, 25 July 1852.
two large volumes… valuable work: a copy of Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes’s (1777–1834), Manual of Higher Geometry. See Hirst, ‘Journals’, 25 July 1852. The enclosed note is missing.
wrote to me for £20: see Hirst, ‘Journals’, 8 August 1852, where he recounted the difficult decision not to provide a loan to January Searle.
the letter you posted: letter missing. Tyndall’s growing disillusionment with January Searle, who had asked him for a loan of £10, is recorded in his journal entry of 25 July 1852 (JT/2/13b/580): ‘The anchors of my opinion regarding January are becoming very loose, not because he asks this but because of the manner in which he asks it. It seems very much an attempt on January’s part to live upon his acquaintances’.
Please cite as “Tyndall0652,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on