Boston, United States of America.
Dear Sir,
Your book on ‘Heat in motion’2 has attracted much attention in the United States, & my present motive in writing is to invite you to give a course of twelve lectures3 before the Lowell Institute4 in Boston in the autumn of 1865 or the winter of 1866.
For such a course I pay 1200 dollars, & to obviate all questions of currency, I would pay it in gold. I am well aware that this would not be a sufficient inducement, unless you were disposed to visit our country, in which case I would suppose that you should come early & devote the summer to travelling. You might then lecture in October & November & be at home before the Xmas holidays.
Sir Charles Lyell who has twice visited the United States on my invitation5 can give you all requisite information.
I am | yours resp[ectfull]y | John Amory Lowell | Boston | 25 Oct[obe]r 1864
RI MS JT/2/10/300
John Amory Lowell: John Amory Lowell (1798–1881), an American businessman and philanthropist. He became the sole trustee of the Lowell Institute once his cousin John Lowell Jr. died in 1836 (D. R. Lowell (ed), The Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America from 1639 to 1899 (Rutland, VT: Tuttle Company, 1899), p. 117).
‘Heat in motion’: Heat as a Mode of Motion.
invite you to give a course of twelve lectures: Tyndall declined this offer in letter 2188. He would eventually visit the United States for a lecture tour (on light) from October 1872 to February 1873 (see M. D. Barton, ‘The “efficient defender of a fellow-scientific man”:
John Tyndall, Darwin, and Preaching Pure Science in Nineteenth-Century America’, MA thesis, Montana State University, 2010; Proceedings at the Farewell Banquet to Professor Tyndall. Given at Delmonico’s, New York, February 4, 1873 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873); K. Sopka, ‘An Apostle of Science Visits America: John Tyndall’s Journey of 1872-1873’, The Physics Teacher, 10 (1972): pp. 369–75; K. Sopka, ‘John Tyndall: International Populariser of Science’, in W. H. Brock, N. D. McMillan, and R. C. Mollan (eds), John Tyndall: Essays on a Natural Philosopher (Dublin: Royal Dublin Society, 1981), pp. 193–203; Ascent of John Tyndall, pp. 301–15; and J. Tyndall, Six Lectures on Light delivered in America in 1872–1873 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1873. Correspondence from during this trip will be in the forthcoming thirteenth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall).
Lowell Institute: an educational foundation in Boston, Massachusetts providing public and academic lectures, founded in 1840 by the American businessman and philanthropist John Lowell Jr. (1799–1836) (ANB).
twice visited the United States on my invitation: Lyell lectured for the Lowell Institute in 1841, 1845, and 1852, and in total visited the United States four times between 1841–53. On Lyell in America, see R. H. Dott, ‘Charles Lyell’s debt to North America: his lectures and
travels from 1841 to 1853’, in D. J. Blundell, & A. C. Scott (eds), Lyell: the Past is the Key to the Present, Special Publications (London: Geological Society, 1998), pp. 53-69; R. H. Dott, ‘Lyell in America—His Lectures, Field Work, and Mutual Influences, 1841–1853’, Earth Sciences History, 15 (1996), pp. 101–40; R. H. Silliman, ‘The Hamlet Affair: Charles Lyell and the North Americans’, Isis, 86 (1995), pp. 541–61; and L. G. Wilson, Lyell in America: Transatlantic Geology, 1841–1853 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
Please cite as “Tyndall2160,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on