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Letter from John Herschel
Add. MS a/207/12 · Item · 17 Aug. 1826
Part of Additional Manuscripts a

JH's reasons for declining to become a candidate for the Lucasian Chair: He does 'not wish to devote myself exclusively or par excellence to any one branch of science - perhaps too a consciousness that I prefer physical to mathematical science'. Any science he does do 'I had rather should be considered as done an amateur than as a matter of duty and profession'. JH has written to [James] Wood to canvass for Babbage. JH has become 'an ultra-Huttonian in regard of long geological periods'.