13. Ashley Place | Nov. 6.
Dear Tyndall.
There will be no Govt. Grant Come.2 till after the Anniversary, and the last meeting of the present Council has I believe been held. The only way therefore that I can think of is that the Prest. & Officers should sanction an advance from the Donation fund3 to be repaid from the Govt. Grant if they i.e. the G. G. Come. should approve of an apportionment of the Gov Grant to Mr. Gore.4
We were all in town together yesterday, & could have settled the matter at once if you had made the application a day or two earlier—now it will be a matter of Correspondence; Your best course I suppose would be to send the formal application, backed by your own and Faraday’s opinion to Stokes, who acts as Secretary of the Govt. Grant Come. —and you might write to him to the same effect as you have to me in regard to keeping Mr. Gore in work when he is well disposed thereto. You shall have my voice, as far as it goes, for an advance from the donation fund.
We shall be at home tomorrow from 11 to 1 should you come this way. The medals were settled Chevreuil,5 Copley6 | Frankland7—& Lindley8 | the Royals9
Sincerely yours | Edward Sabine
RI MS JT/1/S/42
RI MS JT/1/TYP/4/1310
[1857]: the year is given based on mention of RS medal recipients.
Govt. Grant Come: a RS committee established in 1849 for the purpose of granting funds to researchers. For more on the Government Grants, see R. M. MacLeod, ‘The Royal Society and the Government Grant: Notes on the Administration of Scientific Research, 1849–1914’, The Historical Journal 14 (1971), pp. 323–58; and M. Boas Hall, All Scientists Now: The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002 [1984]), chapters 5 and 6.
Donation fund: a RS fund established in 1828 for the purpose of aiding experimental research or rewarding researchers, or for other matters decided upon by the fund’s committee.
approve of an apportionment of the Gov Grant to Mr. Gore: the Roy. Soc. Proc. show no record of Gore having received a Government Grant in 1857 nor in the years following.
Chevreuil: Michel Chevreul (1786–1889), a French chemist (CDSB). He received the 1857 Copley Medal ‘For his researches in organic chemistry, particularly on the composition of the fats, and for his researches on the contrast of colours’. See ‘Adjudication of the Medals of the Royal Society for the year 1857’, Phil. Trans., 147 (1857), p. 620.
Copley: the RS has awarded the Copley Medal annually since 1731, for ‘outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science’.
Frankland: Edward Frankland. He received the Royal Medal ‘For the isolation of the organic radicals of the alcohols, and for his researches on the metallic derivatives of alcohol’. See ‘Adjudication of the Medals of the Royal Society for the year 1857’.
Lindley: John Lindley (1799–1865), botanist and professor at the University College, London (ODNB). He received the Royal Medal ‘For his numerous researches and works on all branches of scientific botany, and especially for his vegetable kingdom, and his genera & species of Orchideae’. See ‘Adjudication of the Medals of the Royal Society for the year 1857’.
Royals: the RS has awarded two Royal Medals each year since 1826, for ‘the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge’ (a third Royal Medal began being awarded each year in 1965).
Please cite as “Tyndall1451,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on