The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein, 1836-1862 : with notes, comments and references to contemporary letters / edited by Georg W.A. Kahlbaum and Francis V. Darbishire.

Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein, 1836-1862 : with notes, comments and references to contemporary letters / edited by Georg W.A. Kahlbaum and Francis V. Darbishire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Far a da V to Schanibcin. RoA'al Institution II January 1861 My dear friend Whether this letter ho. long or short, I will write to you, for I see by my book of dates (I date and enter all the letters I receive from abroad) that 1 have neglected }''ou too long. But all things slip out of my mind, I have nothing else to say. Do not estimate my esteem and affection for you by any such measure, as }'ou might draw from my letters, but value it by the length and quality of your own. As for your last, I received it so near the end of the month that I sent it off at once to Dr. Francis, in hopes of seeing it within three days in the Philosophical Magazine. It did not however a])pear, but I have seen a proof since and it will be given to our men next month. You reall}' startled me with }'our indei^endcnt antozonc. What a wonderful thing oxigen is and to think of the (+) being included in a solid body. I suppose you do not despair of separating it from the fluor spar in its own proper from, what- ever that may be; for I hope it can exist by itself. Docs heat reduce it to O as it does 0 ? Surely you must hold it in your hand like a little strugglcr for if I understand you rightly it must be a far more abundant body than the Caesium ot liunsen' and Knoblauch.^ — For the hold }'ou have already obtained over it, I congratulate you, as I would do if you had obtained a crown, and more than for a new metal. ' Robert Bunsen late professor of Chemistry at Heidelberg where he died in 1899. He was born in iSil at Gottingen. Karl Hermann Knoblauch was professor of Physics at Halle. He was born in 1820 at Berlin and died in 1895 at Baden-Baden. In associating Knoblauch's name to Bunsen's Faraday is labouring under a misapprehension. It is Bunsen and Kirchhof to whom we owe the discovery of cresium in 1S60.