:''This article is about the 19th century Irish scientist. For the unrelated 20th century British politician of the same name, see
John Tyndall (politician).''
'John Tyndall' (
August 2,
1820 –
December 4,
1893) was an
Irish natural philosopher.
With
Charles Darwin and
Thomas Huxley his name is inseparably connected with the battle which began in the middle of the
19th century for making the new standpoint of modern
science part of the accepted
philosophy in general life. For many years, indeed, he came to represent to ordinary Englishmen the typical or ideal
professor of
physics. His strong, picturesque mode of seizing and expressing things gave him an immense living influence both in speech and writing, and disseminated a popular knowledge of physical science such as had not previously existed. But besides being a true educator, and perhaps the greatest popular teacher of natural philosophy in his generation, he was an earnest and original observer and explorer of nature.
Life
Early life
Tyndall was born in
Leighlinbridge,
County Carlow,
Ireland, his father was a member of the local police force and a small landowner, but a man of more than ordinary ability, and descended from a
Tyndall who settled in Ireland, in the mid-seventeenth century, from England.
Tyndall was to a large extent a self-made man. He had no early advantages, but with indomitable earnestness devoted himself to study, to which he was stimulated by the writings of
Carlyle. He passed from a national school in County Carlow, to take up the post of draughtsman (
1839) in the
Irish Ordnance Survey and then to the
English Ordnance Survey (
1842), attending
Mechanics' Institute lectures at
Preston. In
1844 he became a
railway engineer, and in
1847 a teacher at Queenwood College,
Hampshire. From there, with much spirit and in face of many difficulties, he and his colleague
Edward Frankland, attended the
University of Marburg (
1848-
1851), where, by intense application, Tyndall obtained his
doctorate in two years. His inaugural
dissertation was an essay on screw-surfaces.
Meeting Huxley and early work
Tyndall's first original work in physical science was in his experiments on
magnetism and
diamagnetic polarity, on which he worked from
1850 to
1855. While he was still lecturing on natural philosophy at Queenwood College, his magnetic investigations made him known among the leading scientists of the day and, through the initiative of Sir
Edward Sabine, treasurer of the
Royal Society, he was elected
F.R.S. in June
1852. In
1850 he had made
Michael Faraday's acquaintance and, shortly before the
Ipswich meeting of the
British Association in
1851 he began a lasting friendship with Thomas Huxley.
The two young men stood for chairs of physics and natural history respectively, first at
Toronto, next at
Sydney, but they were in each case unsuccessful. On
February 11 1853 however, Tyndall gave, by invitation, a Friday-evening lecture (on "The Influence of Material Aggregation upon the Manifestations of Force") at the
Royal Institution, and his public reputation was at once established. He then joined Huxley in running the science section of the ''
Westminster Review'' and helped to form a group of
evolutionists who paved the way for
Charles Darwin's
1859 publication of ''
The Origin of Species''.
In May
1854 Tyndall was chosen professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution, a post that exactly suited his striking gifts and made him a colleague of Faraday whom, in
1866, he succeeded as scientific adviser to
Trinity House and the
Board of Trade, and, in
1867, as superintendent of the Royal Institution. His reverent attachment to Faraday is recorded in his memorial volume called ''Faraday as a Discoverer'' (
1868).
Glaciology
Tyndall made an extended and serious investigation of
glacier motion, developing a close association with
Switzerland and a prolonged controversy with other contemporary scientists.
In
1854, after the meeting of the British Association in
Liverpool, Tyndall took part in a memorable visit to the
Penrhyn slate quarries, where the question of "slaty
cleavage" arose in his mind, and ultimately led him, with Huxley, to Switzerland to study the phenomena of glaciers of the
Alps. Here the mountains seized him, and he became a constant visitor and one of the most intrepid and most resolute of
mountaineers and explorers. Among other feats of
climbing, he was the first to ascend the
Weisshorn (
1861). Tyndall climbed to within a few hundred feet of the top of the
Matterhorn in
1864, the year before
Edward Whymper succeeded. He would have made the summit but, when at the Matterhorn's penultimate peak, he grudgingly took the advice of his guide to turn back as a storm loomed. The penultimate peak is named in his honour -'John Tyndall 1864' is engraved on a stone upon it. The strong, vigorous, healthiness and enjoyment that permeate the record of his Alpine work are magnificent, and other traces of his influence remain in Switzerland to this day.
His mountaineering expeditions became legendary with his fellows in London's prestigious Alpine Club - he first climbed in the French Alps conquering Mont Blanc after breakfasting on a ham sandwich.
The problem of the flow of glaciers occupied his attention for years, and his views brought him into acute conflict with others, particularly
James David Forbes and
James Thomson. Every-one knew that glaciers moved, but the questions were: how they moved, for what reason and by what mechanism. Some thought they
slid like
solids, others that they
flowed like liquids, others that they crawled by alternate
expansion and
contraction, or by alternate
freezing and
melting. Others again thought that they broke and mended. Thus there arose a chaos of controversy, illuminated by definite
measurements and observations. Tyndall's own summary of the course of research on the subject was as follows:
But while Forbes asserted that ice was
viscous, Tyndall denied it, and insisted, as the result of his observations, on the flow being due to
fracture and
regelation. All agreed that ice flowed as if it were a viscous
fluid and James Thomson offered an independent and purely
thermodynamic explanation of this apparent viscosity. Tyndall considered Thomson's explanation insufficient to account for the facts he observed but
Hermann Helmholtz, in his lecture on "Ice and Glaciers," adopted Thomson's theory, and afterwards added in an appendix that he had come to the conclusion that Tyndall had "assigned the essential and principal cause of glacier motion in referring it to fracture and regelation" (
1865).
Thermodynamics and Microbiology
Tyndall's investigations of the transparency and opacity of gases and vapours for radiant heat, which occupied him during many years (1859-1871), are frequently considered his chief scientific work. But his activities were essentially many-sided. He definitely established the absorptive power of clear
aqueous vapour--a point of great
meteorological significance. An accomplished mountaineer fascinated with Louis Agassiz's daring proposal of ice ages, in which glaciers once covered enormous parts of the globe, Tyndall's experiments showed that in addition to water vapour, carbonic acid (H
2CO
3) - the form of carbon dioxide dissolved in water - can absorb a great deal of heat energy.
[1] He then linked this phenomenon to the possibility of changes in the climate, trying to explain why glaciers could advance and retreat.
[2] He made brilliant experiments elucidating the blue of the sky (which is a phenomenon resulting from
Rayleigh scattering of sunlight) and discovered the precipitation of organic vapours by means of light. He called attention to curious phenomena occurring in the track of a luminous beam. He examined the opacity of the air for sound in connection with lighthouse and siren work.
Tyndall finally clinched the proof of what already had been substantially demonstrated by several others (particularly
Louis Pasteur) that
germ-free air did not initiate
putrefaction, and that accordingly "
spontaneous generation" was a chimera (
1875-
1876). A practical outcome of this research was a method of
sterilizing a liquid medium by heating it to the boiling point at atmospheric pressure on successive days ("Tyndallization"). This treatment is sufficient to kill the growing
microorganisms that develop from heat-refractory
spores after the first day. "Tyndallization" is useful for sterilization of
growth media for
high school science classes and in other situations where
autoclaves are unavailable for pressure sterilization.
[3]
For the substantial publication of these researches reference must be made to the ''Transactions'' of the Royal Society; but an account of many of them was incorporated in his best-known books, namely, the famous ''Heat as a Mode of Motion'' (1863; and later editions to
1880), the first popular exposition of the mechanical theory of heat, which in
1862 had not reached the textbooks; ''The Forms of Water, &c.'' (1872); ''Lectures on Light'' (1873); ''Essays on the floating-matter of the air in relation to putrefaction and infection'' (1881); ''On Sound'' (1867; revised 1875, 1883, 1803). The original memoirs themselves on radiant heat and on magnetism were collected and issued as two large volumes under the following titles: ''Diamagnetism and Magne-crystallic Action'' (1870); ''Contributions to Molecular Physics in the Domain of Radiant Heat'' (1872). In 1875 Tyndall reported to the Royal Society in London that a species of Penicillium had caused some of his bacteria to burst. This discovery of antibiotic properties of penicillium predated
Ernest Duchesne by 20 years and
Alexander Fleming by over 50 years.
Personality and private life
John Tyndall's signature
It was on the whole the personality, however, rather than the discoverer, that was greatest in Tyndall. In the pursuit of science for its own sake, undisturbed by sordid considerations, he shone as a beacon light to younger men — an exemplar of simple tastes, robust nature and lofty aspirations. His elevation above the common run of men was conspicuous in his treatment of the money which came to him in connexion with his successful lecturing tour in the United States(1872–1873). It amounted to several thousands of pounds, but he would touch none of it; he placed it in the hands of trustees for the benefit of American science — an act of lavishness which bespeaks a noble nature.
Though not so prominent as Huxley in detailed controversy over theological problems, Tyndall played an important part in educating the public mind in the attitude which the development of natural philosophy entailed towards dogma and religious authority. His famous Belfast address (1874), delivered as president of the
British Association, made a great stir among those who were then busy with the supposed conflict between science and religion; and in his occasional writings — ''Fragments of Science'', as he called them, "for unscientific people" — he touched on current conceptions of prayer, miracles, etc., with characteristic straightforwardness and vigour.
As a public speaker Tyndall had an inborn Irish readiness and vehemence of expression; and, though a thorough Liberal, he split from
Mr Gladstone on
Irish home rule, and took an active part in politics in opposing it.
In 1876 Tyndall married Louisa, daughter of Lord Claud Hamilton. He built in 1877 a cottage on Bel Alp above the Rhone valley, and in 1885 a house on
Hindhead, near
Haslemere. At the latter place he spent most of his later years; his health was, however, no longer as vigorous as his brain, and he suffered frequently from sleeplessness. In Hindhead on December 4, 1893, Louisa accidentally gave him an overdose of
chloral hydrate - a drug which he took for his insomnia. His last words were, reputedly, "Louisa, you have killed your beloved John." He died during Louisa's agonizing search for an antidote. The doctor she called gave him an emetic but it failed to rouse him. [Eve & Creasy, Life and Work of John Tyndall].
Louisa spent the rest of her days championing his life and work among his peers and the general public, especially children, who he had always striven to imbue with a love of science. She found it difficult to write his biography and was often at loggerheads with the biographers. She first chose the experienced
Leonard Huxley, and later Eve and Creasy. She would not allow them to examine some of his private papers, for reasons which are not known. Before her death she excised pages from her own diaries relating to her personal relationship with John. These diaries - along with John Tyndall's archive, are now housed in the
Royal Institution - of which he was a former Director - in London's Albermarle Street.
One of their prized possessions is a sealed test-tube containing his urine. He once used his urine, in open test tubes, while studying the effect of atmospheric pollution and putrefaction. He would hang one tube on a line in London, one in Hindhead and another in his Alpine retreat, with assistants noting the extent of putrifaction. These experiments helped him prove the germ theories of his antecedents and contemporaries.
The Royal Institution commemorates Tyndall with a series of eponymous BBC-televised Christmas lectures by eminent scientists.
Honours
★ A
crater on
Mars is named in his honour, as is a
pub in
Carlow town, and a mountain,
Mount Tyndall, in California's
Sierra Nevada range.
★ The
asteroid 22694 Tyndall was named in his honour on
1 June 2007.
★ In 2005 the NMRC in Ireland joined with the Photonics group of UCC, to form The Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland, named in his honour. (see link below)
See also
★
Tyndall Centre
★
Tyndall effect
★
Tyndall Forum
★
Discoveries of anti-bacterial effects of penicillium moulds before Fleming
★
Relationship between religion and science
External links
★
★
★
Six Lectures on Light Delivered In The United States In 1872–1873, Project Gutenberg etext.
★
Works by John Tyndall at
Internet Archive
★
VictorianWeb.org Page on Tyndall — links to Tyndall's writings
★
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research — leading European climate change research centre named in honour of Tyndall.
★
Tyndall National Institute — Cork based research institute named after Tyndall
Bibliography
★
About Tyndall
★
Life and Work of John Tyndall, Eve, A.S & Creasey, C.H., , , Macmillan, 1945,
★
John Tyndall, Essays on a Natural Philosopher, Burchfield, J.A., , , Royal Dublin Society, 1981,
★ McMillan N.D. and Meehan J. ''John Tyndall: 'X'emplar of scientific & technological education''. National Council for Educational Awards, Dublin [1980]. [despite its chaotic organisation, this little book contains some nuggets that are well worth sifting]
By Tyndall
★
The Glaciers of the Alps, Tyndall, J., , , Adamant Media Corp., 2005, ISBN 1-4212-0908-X
★
Heat, A Mode of Motion, Tyndall, J., , , Adamant Media Corp., 2001, ISBN 1-4021-6852-7
★
Fragments of Science for Unscientific People: A Series of Detached Essays, Lectures, and Reviews, Tyndall, J., , , Adamant Media Corp., 2001, ISBN 1-4021-7127-7
★
Sound, Tyndall, J., , , Adamant Media Corp., 2005, ISBN 1-4021-7037-8
★
Faraday as a Discoverer, Tyndall, J., , , Indypublish.com, 2003, ISBN 1-4043-6523-0
★
The Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers, Tyndall, J., , , Kessinger, 2005, ISBN 1-4179-4205-3
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