I2 had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of your friend Fraulein Becker,3 and also of her charming pupil Miss Mary Strutt,4 at Lord Belper’s5 last August. I was struck exceedingly by the energy of your friend, who seemed to be a great favorite with the family.
It would be a great pleasure to me to make the acquaintance of Mrs Helmholtz:6 and if you do not bring her to England with you,7 I shall make a pilgrimage to Heidelberg to see you and her.
With best wishes | Believe me ever yours truly | John Tyndall
I have closely studied the first part of the Ton-Empfindungen8 lately—It is admirable.
RI MS JT/1/T/503
LT Typescript Only
[late 1863/early 1864]: the dated is given based on content: Tonempfindungen was published in 1863, and Helmholtz visited England in April 1864 (see n. 7).
Fragment only; letter incomplete.
Fraulein Becker: not identified; possibly the wife of Ernst Becker.
Miss Mary Strutt: daughter (dates unknown) of Edward Strutt (see n. 5).
Lord Belper: Edward Strutt (1801–80), 1st Baron Belper, a British liberal politician. In 1856 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Belper, of Belper, in the County of Derby (ODNB).
Mrs Helmholtz: Anna Helmholtz (née Mohl, 1834–99), a Berlin salonnière and translator of scientific works. She married Herman Helmholtz in 1861. With Clara Wiedemann she translated Tyndall’s books on heat and sound into German (ADB).
bring her to England with you: Anna did not join him for the trip to London. Helmholtz left Heidelberg on 11 March 1864, and in the month before his RI lectures, stayed with and visited various acquaintances, attended meetings of the RS, met politicians and diplomats, enjoyed London cultural life, and made a visit to Oxford, among many other activities (D. Cahan: Helmholtz: A Life in Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), pp. 293–305). After Easter he delivered a series of six lectures at the RI, ‘On the Natural Law of Conservation of Energy’, on 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, and 21 April 1864 (RI Guard Book, vol. 3, pp. 105–6; Roy. Inst. Proc., 4 (1862 – 66), p. 157), and delivered the Croonian Lecture for the RS and Royal College of Physicians on 14 April (H. Helmholtz, ‘On the Normal Motions of the Human Eye in Relation to Binocular Vision’, Roy. Soc. Proc., 13 (1863–64), pp. 186–199).
Ton-Empfindungen: H. Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (Braunschweig: Druck und Verlag von Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1863). This would be later published in English as On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1875), translated by Alexander J. Ellis.
Please cite as “Tyndall2060,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on