Experimental Researches in Electricity. Twenty-ninth Series.

inscribed presentation offprint

The rare offprint, with presentation inscription at the head of the title page, 'Rev. Dr. Robinson, from the author'. The second of Faraday's important 1851 papers establishing his concept of 'lines of force', which had originally been proposed in his earliest paper on electromagnetism in 1821.

'Faraday had thus found experimental evidence that magnetism was a universal property of matter and also for his views of the nature of matter and space. He outlined his new understanding in his lecture 'Thoughts on ray-vibrations' delivered on 3 April 1846. This lecture was seen by Maxwell, Silvanus P. Thompson, and others as laying the foundations of the field theory of electromagnetism. Although Faraday had used the word 'field' in 1845, it was in a purely descriptive sense of the space surrounding the magnet. During the first half of the 1850s he developed arguments for the reality of the field, which by 1851 he defined in terms of lines of force. The mathematization of field theory by Thomson and Maxwell, in consultation with Faraday, led to the theory becoming one of the fundamental concepts of modern physics. It also led Faraday to a lessening of his scepticism of the power of mathematics to describe nature' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

'From 1831 to 1852, Michael Faraday published his "Experimental Researches in Electricity" in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. These papers contain not only an impressive series of experimental discoveries, but also a collection of heterodox theoretical concepts on the nature of these phenomena expressed in terms of lines of forces and fields. He published 30 papers in all under this general title. They represent Faraday's most important work, are classics in both chemistry and physics, and are the experimental foundations for Maxwell's electro-magnetic theory of light, using Faraday's concepts of lines of force or tubes of magnetic and electrical forces' (Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether & Electricity, p. 197).

The recipient of this copy, astronomer the Rev. Thomas Romney Robinson (1793-1882) was a child prodigy who enrolled in Trinity College, Dublin at age twelve, becoming a fellow in 1814. In 1823 he was appointed astronomy at Armagh Observatory, where he established a rigourous routine of positional observations' with 'a determination unusual in observatories of the time, and quite exceptional in one so small, isolated, and poorly situated for observing'. He 'published a great many papers on a wide range of topics across physics and astronomy. He was in great demand as an erudite and entertaining public speaker on scientific subjects, having made his name at the early meetings of the BAAS' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Robinson was president of the Royal Irish Academy, a fellow of the Royal Society, and received honorary degrees from Dublin, Oxford, and Cambridge.

23-page offprint; engraved plate at rear, author's presentation inscription to the title, ownership inscription to the upper wrapper, contents unopened, horizontal crease from folding throughout, contents faintly toned in the margins, plate foxed; original buff wrappers which are a little rubbed and dulled, a little loss from the ends of the spine panel, very good condition.

Norman Library of Science and Medicine 760.