Michael Faraday

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 14, 16 October 1931, Page 8

Michael Faraday

His Letters and Correspondents WMicHAEL’ FARADAY, the immortal scientist whose centenary was recently celebrated, portrayed himself in his letters as perhaps no other scientist has ever done. He wrote an enormous number in his careful handwriting. Whether to one of his fellow scientists, to his beloved nieces or to strangers, no letter ever gives the impression that it was written perfunctorily or without real interest in the subject of the letter. His first correspondent to whom he wrote a long series of letters between 1809 and 1817 was a young Quaker named Benjamin Abbott. Faraday, at the time, was a bookbinder’s apprentice making electrochemical experiments with a little battery made of strips of zine and copper coins. Abbott shared Faraday’s passion for science, and the letters are interesting from this point of view alone. They also throw light on Faraday's entry into the Royal Institution. There are some very amusing ones on the habits and defects of the lecturers he heard there. When Faraday went abroad with Sir Humphrey Davy, it was to Benjamin Abbott that he wrote of his difficulties with Lady Davyhow she insisted on treating him as a valet and how he only just refrained from returning home notwithstanding the pleasures of travelling. But, above all, these letters to Benjamin Abbott are important for the light they throw on Waraday’s character. It is in them that he makes his attitude to life clear to himself. We see him in these letters not at all afraid to say that he is trying hard to improve himself; he is humble enough even to account as one of the benefits of letter writing an improvement effected in his handwriting! A contrast to these letters are those he wrote at the end. of his life to Schonbein, a Swiss professor at Basle, who did very valuable work on ozone, and to his friend Tyndall. His first letters to Schonbein are almost entirely about scientific subjects, but as their ace quaintance ripened, friendship coloured them. "After all, though your science is much to me, we are not friends for science only, but for something better in a man, something more important in his nature-affection, kindness, good feeling, moral worth." This correspondence with Schonbein has a tragic interest, for in it Faraday recounts the gradual loss of his powers-his muscular weakness, his fading memory. In 1865, his last note to Schonbein runs thus:-"‘Again and again, I tear up my letter for I write nonsense. I cannot spell or write a line continuously. Whether I shall recover -this confusion-I do not know. I will not write any more to you. My love to you." One of the best of Faraday’s letters was written to a gentleman who kept plaguing him about table-turning and other "spiritualistic" manifestations :- "Sir,-I beg to acknowledge your letter of the 38rd, but I.am weary of the spirits-all hope of any useful resu!t from investigation is gone; hut as some persons still believe is them, and I continually receive letters, I must

— bring these communications to-a closes Whenever the spirits can counteract gravity or originate motion, or supply an action due to natural physical force, or counteract any such action, when ever they can punch’or prick me, or affect my sense of feeling or any other sense, or in any other way act on me without my waiting on them; or working in the light can show me a hand, either writing or not; or in any way. make themselves manifest to me; whenever these things are done or anything which a conjurer cannot do bet~ter; or, rising to higher proofs, whenever the spirits describe their own nature, and like honest spirits say what they can do, or pretending, as their supporters do, that they can act on ordinary matter whenever they initiate action, and so make themselves manifest; whenever by such-like signs they come to me, and ask my attention to them, I will give it. But until some of these things be done, I have no ni time to spare for them, or their belidyers, or for correspondence about them... ."