Royal Observatory, Greenwich. | London, S.E. | 1857 August 15
My dear Sir,
On returning from an absence of some weeks, I find a copy of your charming paper1 on the musical sounds of tubes produced by gas flames. The exhibition which you have given to me had enabled me to seize at once on all that I had not actually seen, and I was much delighted with it.
You are so completely master in every thing that relates to interference of undulations that I very much wish I could enlist you to thoroughly study the geometrical and algebraical theory of the phenomena of Depolarization. The most important papers on this subject are some by myself, namely in the Cambridge Transactions ‘On the two rays in quartz’2 and ‘On a new Analyzer’3 and the tract on the Undulatory Theory4 in my ‘Mathematical Tracts.’ Our physicists in general and our optical experimenters in particular (always excepting Stokes, the prince of mathematicians) have been such wretched mathematicians that these subjects are sealed to them: I wish greatly that you would enter into them.5
The instance of the Atlantic cable6 and other things make me think that I must begin to look practically to the Galvanic Induction.7 Is there any philosophical-instrument-maker in London whom you could recommend as a competent and trustworthy maker of induction-apparatus?
I am, my dear Sir, | Yours very truly | G. B. Airy.
Dr. Tyndall | &c. &c. &c.
RGO MS.RGO 6/378.515
RGO MS.RGO 6/471.173
RI MS JT/1/TYP/1/22
your charming paper: J. Tyndall, ‘On the Sounds produced by the Combustion of Gases in Tubes’, Phil. Trans., 13 (1857), pp. 476–9.
‘On the two rays in quartz’: G. B. Airy, ‘On the Nature of the Light in the two Rays produced by the Double Refraction of Quartz’, Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 4 (1833), pp. 79–123; 199–208.
‘On a new Analyzer’: G. B. Airy, ‘On a new Analyzer, and its Use in Experiments of Polarization’, Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 4 (1833), pp. 313–322.
tract on the Undulatory Theory: G. B. Airy, Mathematical Tracts on the Lunar and Planetary Theories, the Figure of the Earth, Precession and Nutation, the Calculus of Variations, and the Undulatory Theory of Optics (Cambridge: J. Smith, 1831), pp. 249–409.
prince of mathematicians… enter into them: this portion of the sentence is missing from the manuscript letter (the last page of which is a handwritten copy) and is transcribed from the typescript.
instance of the Atlantic cable: the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable on 5 August 1857 was unsuccessful, and a lasting cable connection did not occur until the mid-1860s.
Galvanic Induction: see letter 1346, n. 1.
Please cite as “Tyndall1421,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on