London 9th Oct. 1856.
My dear Friend,1
You ask me for a certificate of your abilities as a Teacher of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. The request reminds me of the fact that it is not always the world’s best men who are most widely known in the world; for assuredly if your merits were known as they deserve to be no certificate from me would be needed to attest them. Both your acquirements as a mathematician and physicist, as also your power of communicating knowledge, are well known to me; and the result of this knowledge is that if I had a son to instruct in the above sciences I would place him in your hands sooner than in those of any other living man. To natural endowments of the first order you have been able to add a personal intercourse for years with the most distinguished scientific men of Germany, and I know that their opinion of your qualifications entirely coincides with my own. You have had three years experience as teacher and lecturer in a most important school in the south of England; and to your ability and the salutary influence which you exercised upon the pupils, the present prosperity of Queenwood College is, in my opinion, mainly due. If at any future time you should deem the expression of these opinions useful to you it will give me happiness to repeat them to Faraday, Sabine, Grove, Lyell and other men of distinction with whom I have the pleasure of being acquainted.
Believe me | ever sincerely yours | John Tyndall F.R.S. &c.
Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
RI MS JT/1/H/476
My dear Friend: This is Tyndall’s formal testimonial in response to Hirst’s request in letter 1280.
Please cite as “Tyndall1284,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on