Royal Institution ǀ 24th. March 1857.
My dear Mr. Faraday
I think I ought to let you know that my feelings with regard to M. Plücker are, that he is not dealing with me in an open and upright manner. I can hardly imagine myself writing of him as he does not scruple to write of me.1 My relation to him has been altogether of a public kind, and he ought to deal with it in a public manner. If the facts do not justify what I have done let him shew this, and I am willing to make reparation. But M. Plücker must feel that a reference to facts would only prove that I have been very tender of his reputation as an experimenter, and hence he resorts to a private canvass of my ‘motives’.2 What guarantee have I that he does not write to all his friends as he has written to Wheatstone, where he broadly insinuates that I have unfairly influenced you against him3—a charge which you know to be as unjust as it is unwarranted. Instead of dealing with facts in a philosophic spirit, M. Plücker deals in suspicions regarding me which arise purely out of his own constitution. I think I have reason to complain of this. If he wishes to influence you in his favour let the case be laid fully before you and I pledge myself to abide by your decision. If you can call to mind your own impressions regarding his meaning when he experimented with you here,4 I venture to say they will be substantially the same as mine.
Ever yours, ǀ John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/TYP/12/4067
Typed Transcript Only
I can hardly imagine myself writing of him as he does not scruple to write of me: the dispute between Tyndall and Plücker revolved around Tyndall’s 1855 ‘On the Nature of the Force by Which Bodies Are Repelled from the Poles of a Magnet’, published in Phil. Trans., 145 (1855), pp. 1–51. In the paper, Tyndall quoted an English translation of Plücker’s ‘Ueber die Abstossung der optischen Axen der Krystalle durch die Pole der Magnete’, Poggen. Annal., 72 (1847), pp. 315–43, published in English as J. Plücker, ‘On the Repulsion of the Optic Axes of Crystals by the Poles of a Magnet’, Scientific Memoirs, 5 (1852), pp. 353–75. In March 1856 Plücker wrote to Faraday that the English translation was incorrect and that Tyndall was ‘fighting against a theory, which never was mine’ (see letter 3105, Plücker to Faraday, 24 March 1856, Faraday Correspondence, pp. 70–3). Plücker eventually replied to Tyndall’s critique in a paper communicated through Faraday to the RS, writing: ‘the theoretical views imputed to me by Professor Tyndall… are not mine, and have never been mine’. See letter 3251, Plücker to Faraday, 14 March 1857, Faraday Correspondence, pp. 201–2; J. Plücker, ‘On the Magnetic Induction of Crystals’, Phil. Trans., 148 (1858), pp. 543–87, on p. 545. In letter 1299 of this volume, Tyndall wrote to de la Rive of Plücker’s unfriendliness toward him. Their unfriendly relationship likely extended before this. When Tyndall was chosen for the RS’s Royal Medal in 1853 ‘For his paper on diamagnetism and magne-crystallic action, published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1851’, some council members doubted his priority in the original research, insisting that Plücker deserved the award instead. On account of this dispute, Tyndall declined the medal (see letter 0828, John Tyndall to Samuel Hunter Christie, 15 November 1853, Tyndall Correspondence, vol. 4). See also, R. Jackson, ‘John Tyndall and the Royal Medal that was never struck’, Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 68 (2014), pp. 151–64; and R. Jackson, ‘John Tyndall and the Early History of Magnetism’, Annals of Science, 72 (2015), pp. 435–89, on pp. 461–2 and 477–9.
he resorts to a private canvass of my ‘motives’: Faraday may have shared Plücker’s letter of 2 January 1857 with Tyndall. Plücker wrote to Faraday: ‘I have no animosity against M T. as I think he has none against myself [.] I will not examine the motives he had, when he suggested to me ideas, which never were mines, and which I think absurd’ (letter 3220, Plücker to Faraday, 2 January 1857, Faraday Correspondence, pp. 182–3).
he has written to Wheatstone, where he broadly insinuates that I have unfairly influenced you against him: in his journal entry for 1 April 1856, Tyndall wrote that Wheatstone had read to him a portion of a letter from Plücker. Tyndall wrote ‘there are few men in his position that could be converted into a greater scientific scarecrow that this same M. Plücker—but this I have always abstained from doing, and will continue to abstain unless he pushes me altogether too far’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/832–3). Tyndall also wrote to Hirst about the letter in April 1856 (see letter 1208, John Tyndall to Thomas Hirst, 6 April 1856, Tyndall Correspondence, vol. 5).
when he experimented with you here: Faraday wrote in his diary for 25 August 1848: ‘Today Plücker shewed me for the first time some of his experiments’. See T. Martin (ed.), Faraday’s Diary: being the various philosophical notes of experimental investigation made by Michael Faraday, 7 vols (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1934), vol. 5 (1847–1851), p. 59.
Please cite as “Tyndall1360,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on