Experimental Researches in Electricity. Twenty-third Series.

£2,750 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

inscribed presentation offprint The rare offprint, with presentation inscription at the head of the title page, 'Rev. Dr. Robinson, from the author'. Diamagnetism is the property that describes matter which is repelled by a magnetic field. It was first discovered by Anton Brugmans in 1778 but it was Faraday who recognised that it and paramagnetism (attraction to a magnetic field) were fundamental properties of all matter. '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

• Binding: Hardcover

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