Philosophical Institution | Edinburgh 6 June 1860
Dear Sir
I am again instructed by the Directors of the Philosophical Institution2 to convey to you their very Cordial and unanimous invitation to deliver, some time in the Course of next Session, two Lectures to the Members, and they all will be much gratified to learn that you can accept the invitation. The subject which they beg to propose to you for treatment is the Phenomena of the Glaciers.
Our platform is happily a broad one, and from which men holding different views on Scientific and Literary subjects can, with the utmost freedom and good feeling, announce their views. In this spirit you would be welcomed to the Institution—heartily welcomed; and permit me also to assure you that not only to the Members generally, but to not a few men of Science here, and several of these friends of your own, your visit would, likewise, be peculiarly gratifying.
Our session begins in November 1860, and ends about the middle of March 1861: —the lecture days being the Tuesday and Friday of each week. You could thus, if necessary, leave London on a Monday night and be back on Saturday. The Directors would take it very kind could you, if you can do no more, give this short space to a visit here; and they will, with pleasure, endeavor to accommodate you with the exact date in the Session most suitable to you.
I formerly mentioned3 that the fee for the Two Lectures is £21—
I send by this post a Copy of the Report of the affairs of the Institution4 for the year lately closed—and I beg to direct your attention, in particular, to the portion of the Report bearing on our lecture department.
My Directors will be glad to have a reply at your early convenience.5
I am Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Henry Bowie; Sec[retar]y
Professor Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/B/121
Henry Bowie: Henry Bowie (1812–85), secretary and treasurer of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution.
the Philosophical Institution: The Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, formed in 1846, was a reformed version of the earlier Edinburgh Philosophical Association. Shapin argues that it was ‘less scientific’ but ‘more socially elevated’ than its predecessor, with lawyers being a much larger share of the membership: S. Shapin, ‘“Nibbling at the teats of science”: Edinburgh and the diffusion of science in the 1830s’, in I. Inkster and J. Morrell (eds), Metropolis and Province (London: Routledge, 1983), p. 177. For a detailed analysis of the Philosophical Institution, see D. A. Finnegan, ‘Placing science in an age of oratory: spaces of scientific speech in mid-Victorian Edinburgh’, in D. N. Livingstone and C. W. J. Withers (eds), Geographies of Nineteenth–Century Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 153–77.
I formerly mentioned: letter missing.
Report of the affairs of the Institution: missing.
a reply at your early convenience: reply is missing. It does not appear that Tyndall lectured on this occasion. He did lecture at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution in 1866, on sonorous vibrations: ‘Philosophical Institution—Professor Tyndall on Sonorous Vibrations’, Caledonian Mercury, 15 December 1866.
Please cite as “Tyndall1711,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on