Pembroke College, Cambridge | July 19, 1856
My dear Sir,
You did not get my letter1 till some days after it was written, and the Friday referred to was last Friday,2 so there is no particular hurry about Mr Claudet’s paper,3 though it is pleasant to get such things off one’s stomach.
There will be no more meetings of the Govt. Grant Committee4 until after the recess.5 I don’t think it likely they would wish to recall the grant6 if you are likely to make use of it, though not immediately. It is just possible there might be some particular pressure on the grant this year which might make them wish to recall it for the present, to be renewed again, but I don’t think this likely.
Yours very truly | G.G. Stokes
Dr Tyndall F.R.S.
RI MS JT/1/S/218
my letter: letter missing.
last Friday: Unclear; Stokes may have meant either Friday 11 or 18 July 1856.
Mr Claudet’s paper: Tyndall had been asked to referee a paper submitted to the Royal Society by the French photographer Antoine Claudet (1797–1867; FRS 1853). Tyndall submitted the ‘Report on A. F. J. Claudet on Various Phenomena of Refraction through Semi-lenses or Prisms, Producing Anomalies in the Illusion of Stereoscopic Images’ on 30 July 1856. See letter 1264. An abstract of Claudet’s paper was published in Roy. Soc. Proc., 8 (1856), pp. 104–10.
the Govt. Grant Committee: See letter 1091, n.9. Tyndall had applied successfully for £50 in 1852 and for £100 in 1855. He had applied again in 1856.
the recess: the Royal Society did not meet during the summer months and resumed meeting on 29 November 1856.
to recall the grant: Tyndall had applied for a grant of £100 for the purchase of apparatus. Thinking that the request would be refused, Bence Jones had given Tyndall the money so that the magnetic research could continue without interruption (RI MS JT/2/13c/ 850 and RS CM, 11 July 1856, 2: 363–4).
Please cite as “Tyndall1256,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on