xvi
INTRODUCTION
already been done, instead of having to take the trouble of finding
it out again for myself. But it is some satisfaction to find
gradually that things which are new to me make their appearance
less frequently; at any rate that is my experience in the special
department at which I have worked.
His research gained the prize.
4th August 1879.
Happily I have not only obtained the prize, but the decision
of the Faculty has been expressed in terms of such commendation
that I feel twice as proud of it. . . . I had gone with Dr. K. and
L. [to hear the public announcement of the decision] without
having said anything, but fully determined not to show any
disappointment if the result was unfavourable.
11th August 1879.
I have chosen the medal, in accordance with your wish, for
the prize. It is a beautiful gold medal, quite a large one, but by
a piece of incredible stupidity it has no inscription whatever on it,
nothing even to show that it is a University prize.
This prize research was Hertz's first investigation, and it
is to this he refers in the Introduction to his Electric Waves,
as being engaged upon it when von Helmholtz invited him to
attack the problem¹ propounded for the prize of the Berlin
Academy. For reasons now known to us, he gave up the idea
of working at the problem. He preferred to apply himself to
other work, which was perhaps of a more modest nature, but
promised to yield some tangible result.
So he turned his attention to the theoretical investigation
"On Induction in Rotating Spheres" (II. in this volume).
This extensive investigation was made in an astonishingly
short time. The first sketch of it, which still exists, is dated
from time to time in Hertz's handwriting, and one sees with
surprise what rapid progress he made from day to day. He
had made preliminary studies at home during the autumn
vacation of 1896, and the results of these are partly contained
1879
1 This latter seems to be the problem in electromagnetics to which von
Helmholtz refers in his Preface to Hertz's Principles of Mechanics as having
been proposed by himself in the belief that it was one in which his pupil would
feel an interest.