Athenaeum2 | 4th Nov.
My dear Tyndall,
Allow me to add my congratulations to those of your numerous friends and well wishers at the result of this day’s ballot at the Royal Society which led to the so justly merited award to you of the Rumford medal.3 The decision was all but unanimous in your favour and I sincerely hope that you may live long to enjoy this distinction and to earn new claims to the estimation of your fellow laborers in science by the same course of strenuous exertion which has gained you your present most flattering success.
You will be pleased also to hear that Hirst has been elected on the Council and was one of the few who had his name on every one of the balloting papers.
Believe me with renewed congratulations | Yours ever truly | J. J. Sylvester
I think we may exchange congratulations at the award of the Copley Medal to Darwin4—It is long since I have felt such a thrill of satisfaction as I have experienced from the upshot of this day’s proceedings. It is a day that will long be memorable in the annals of progress. The Royal Society has done itself honor and conferred honor on Old England by this public recognition of transcendent merit.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/4/1509
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[1864]: the year is given by reference to Tyndall receiving the RS’s Rumford Medal and Darwin the Copley Medal.
Athenaeum: see letter 1907, n. 7.
award to you of the Rumford medal: the Rumford Medal is bestowed by the RS every alternating year for ‘an outstandingly important recent discovery in the field of thermal or optical properties of matter made by a scientist working in Europe’. Tyndall received the medal in 1864 ‘for his researches on the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours’ (‘November 30, 1864. Anniversary Meeting’, Roy. Soc. Proc., 13 (1864), pp. 494–520, on pp. 515–7).
Copley Medal to Darwin: The Copley Medal, the RS’s oldest and most prestigious award, is bestowed to its recipient for outstanding achievements in any branch of science. Darwin received the Copley Medal in 1864 ‘for his important researches in Geology, Zoology, and Botanical Physiology’ (‘November 30, 1864. Anniversary Meeting’, Roy. Soc. Proc., 13 (1864), pp. 494–520, on pp. 505–10).
Please cite as “Tyndall2169,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on