Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

by Silvanus P. Thompson

I am always glad to hear of your wanting new words, because the want shows that you are pursuing new thoughts—and your new thoughts are worth something—but I always feel also how difficult it is for one who has not pursued the train of thought to suggest the right word. There are so many relations involved in a new discovery, and the word ought not glaringly to violate any of them. The purists would certainly object to the opposition, or co-ordination, of ferromagnetic and diamagnetic, not only on account of the want of symmetry in the relation of ferro and dia, but also because the one is Latin and the other Greek.... Hence it would appear that the two classes of magnetic bodies are those which place their length parallel, or according, to the terrestrial magnetic lines, and those which place their length transverse to such lines. Keeping the preposition dia for the latter, the preposition para, or ana, might be used for the former. Perhaps para would be best, as the word parallel, in which it is involved, would be a technical memory for it.... I rejoice to hear that you have new views of discovery opening to you. I always rejoice to hail the light of such when they dawn upon you.

The twenty-sixth series of researches opened with a consideration of magnetic “conducting power,” or permeability as we should now term it, and then branched off into a lengthy discussion of atmospheric magnetism. The subject was continued through the twenty-seventh series, which was completed in November, 1850. The gist of this is summed up in one of his letters to Schönbein:—

Royal Institution, November 19, 1850.

My Dear Schönbein,—I wish I could talk with you, instead of being obliged to use pen and paper. I have fifty matters to speak about, but either they are too trifling for writing, or too important, for what can one discuss or say in a letter?... By the bye, I have been working with the oxygen of the air also. You remember that three years ago I distinguished it as a magnetic gas in my paper on the diamagnetism of flame and gases founded on Bancalari’s experiment. Now I find in it the cause of all the annual and diurnal, and many of the irregular, variations in the terrestrial magnetism. The observations made at Hobarton, Toronto, Greenwich, St. Petersburg, Washington, St. Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, and Singapore, all appear to me to accord with and support my hypothesis. I will not pretend to give you an account of it here, for it would require some detail, and I really am weary of the subject. I have sent in three long papers to the Royal Society, and you shall have copies of them in due time....

Ever, my dear Schönbein, most truly yours,
M. Faraday.

PAPERS TO BE LET LOOSE.

While writing out these researches for the Royal Society, he had been staying in Upper Norwood. He wrote thus of himself to Miss Moore at the end of August:—

We have taken a little house here on the hill-top, where I have a small room to myself, and have, ever since we came here, been deeply immersed in magnetic cogitations. I write, and write, and write, until three papers for the Royal Society are nearly completed, and I hope that two of them will be good if they justify my hopes, for I have to criticise them again and again before I let them loose. You shall hear of them at some of the Friday evenings. At present I must not say more. After writing, I walk out in the evening, hand-in-hand with my dear wife, to enjoy the sunset; for to me, who love scenery, of all that I have seen or can see there is none surpasses that of Heaven. A glorious sunset brings with it a thousand thoughts that delight me.

To De la Rive he wrote later as follows:—

[M. Faraday to A. de la Rive.]