Royal Society | Somerset House | April 26 1855
My dear Sir,
At the last meeting of the Council1 it was voted, on the recommendation of the referees,2 that your paper3 should be printed in the Transactions. Both the referees have made remarks in side papers on points here and there in your paper. These I submit to your consideration. Should you be disposed to make any material alteration in the paper (which I send you) please to send back the paper in the original state with fresh leaves containing the substitutions in order that we may have the evidence in case of any future dispute relating to priority.
Thomson in his report4 seemed to think that you have been contending in part against an imaginary adversary, for with the exception of Van Feilitch5 whose opinion he conceived originated in an obvious mistake, nearly all who had attended to the subject adopted polarity. For my own part (and I conversed with Thomson on the subject almost from the first) I don’t think I ever had any other idea about it than that of a polarity (relative or absolute) of a contrary sign to that in a paramagnetic substance. I mention myself merely as a specimen of the public who had paid no particular attention to the subject; but I am certain that was Thomson’s and it seems also it was Faraday’s view from the first.
Please write me a line to Cambridge to let me know approximately when your paper will be ready that I may arrange about the printing.
Yours very truly | G. G. Stokes.
RI MS JT/1/S/217
the last meeting of the Council: The RS Council met on 21 April 1855, with some business held over until 23 April.
the referees: William Thomson and William Hallowes Miller (1801–80), who was the professor of mineralogy at the University of Cambridge, submitted reports (RS MS RR/2/252 and RR/2/253).
your paper: Tyndall’s Bakerian Lecture; see letter 1029, n. 1.
Thomson in his report: ‘In fact except for Von Feilitsch whose “theory” is founded on a mistake most obvious from the beginning and in my opinion not worthy of more notice than very shortly to point out that mistake, all Mr Tyndall’s experiments and views are in perfect accordance with those indicated by Faraday from the beginning, and advocated by myself’ (Thomson to Stokes, [14 March 1855], in The Correspondence between Sir George Gabriel Stokes and Sir William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs, ed. D. B. Wilson, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), vol. 1, p. 124).
Van Feilitch: O. von Feilitzsch, ‘On the Physical Distinction of Magnetic and Diamagnetic Bodies’, Phil. Mag., 1 (1851), pp. 46–51.
Please cite as “Tyndall1076,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on