238 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



account for these phenomena only by supposing the long wire to 

 become charged with electricity which by its reaction on itself pro- 

 jects a spark when the connection is broken."* This is the earliest 

 notice of the curious phenomenon of self-induction in an electric 

 discharge. 



Election as Professor at Princeton. The Trustees of the College 

 of New Jersey at Princeton, were about this time in search of a Pro- 

 fessor to fill the chair of Natural Philosophy in that College, made 

 vacant by the resignation of Professor Henry Vethake, who had 

 accepted a Professorship of Natural Philosophy in the recently 

 established University of the City of New York. Professor Henry 

 had already won considerable reputation as a lecturer and teacher, 

 no less than as an experimental physicist. Professor Benjamin 

 Silliman of Yale College, urging his appointment, wrote: "Henry 

 has no superior among the scientific men of the country." And 

 Professor James Renwick of Columbia College (New York) still 

 more emphatically added: "He has no equal." 



Professor Henry was unanimously elected by the Trustees ;f 

 and he accepted the appointment : although strongly attached to his 

 first Academy, endeared to him by early memories, by six years of 

 successful labors, and by the warm regard of all his associates. May 

 it not be added that his residence at the capital of the State of New 

 York was further endeared to him by life's romance, a most con- 

 genial and happy marriage contracted in 1830. 



ELECTRICAL RESEARCHES AT PRINCETON : FROM 1833 TO 1842. 



In November, 1832, Henry left the scene of his early scientific 

 triumphs, the Albany Academy, and removed to Princeton with 

 his family. For a year or two he gave his whole attention and 

 exertions to the duties of exposition and instruction ; and during Dr. 

 Torrey's visit to Europe in 1833, at the Doctor's request, Profes- 

 sor Henry filled ad interim his chair of Chemistry, Mineralogy, 



* Silliman's Am. Jour. Sci. July, 1832, vol. xxii.p. 408. 



f Dr. MACLEAN, connected with the Faculty of the College of New Jersey at Prince- 

 ton for fifty years, and for fourteen years its venerable president, in his History of 

 the College (2 vols. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1877,) gives a very interesting account of the 

 appointment and election of JOSEPH HENRY as Professor of Natural Philosophy in 

 1832, vol. ii. pp. 288-291. 



