| John Tyndall | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 2 August 1820 Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland |
| Died | 4 December 1893 (aged 73) Hindhead, Surrey, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | Royal Institution of Great Britain |
| Alma mater | University of Marburg |
| Known for | Atmosphere, physics education, Tyndall effect, diamagnetism, infrared radiation, Tyndallization |
John Tyndall FRS (2 August 1820 – 4 December 1893) was a prominent 19th century physicist. His initial scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he studied thermal radiation, and produced a number of discoveries about processes in the atmosphere. Tyndall published seventeen books, which brought state-of-the-art 19th century experimental physics to a wider audience. From 1853 to 1887 he was professor of physics at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, where he became the successor to positions held by Michael Faraday.
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Tyndall was born in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland. His father was a local police constable and small landowner, descended from Gloucestershire emigrants who settled in southeast Ireland around 1670. Tyndall attended the local schools in County Carlow until his late teens, and was probably an assistant teacher near the end of his time there. Subjects learned at school notably included technical drawing and mathematics with some applications of those subjects to land surveying. He was hired as a draftsman by the government's land surveying & mapping agency in Ireland in his late teens in 1839, and moved to work for the same agency in England in 1842. In the decade of the 1840s, a railroad-building boom was in progress, and Tyndall's land surveying experience was valuable and in demand by the railroad companies. Between 1844 and 1847, he was lucratively employed in railroad construction planning.[1][2]
In 1847 Tyndall opted to become a mathematics teacher at a boarding school in Hampshire. Recalling this decision later, he wrote: "the desire to grow intellectually did not forsake me; and, when railway work slackened, I accepted in 1847 a post as master in Queenwood College."[3][4] Another recently-arrived young teacher at Queenwood was Edward Frankland, who had previously worked as a chemical laboratory assistant for the British Geological Survey. Frankland and Tyndall became good friends. On the strength of Frankland's prior knowledge, they decided to go to Germany to further their education in science. (Among other things, Frankland knew that certain German universities were ahead of any in Britain in experimental chemistry and physics. British universities were still focused on classics and mathematics and not laboratory science.) The pair moved to Germany in summer 1848 and enrolled at the University of Marburg, where Robert Bunsen was an influential teacher. Tyndall studied under Bunsen for two years.[5] Probably more influential for Tyndall at Marburg was Professor Hermann Knoblauch, with whom Tyndall maintained communications by letter for many years afterwards. Tyndall's Marburg dissertation was a mathematical analysis of screw surfaces in 1850 (under Friedrich Ludwig Stegmann). He stayed at Marburg for a further year doing research on magnetism with Knoblauch, including some months' visit at the laboratory of Knoblauch's main teacher, Gustav Magnus in Berlin. It is clear today that Bunsen and Magnus were among the very best experimental science instructors of the era. Thus, when Tyndall returned to live in England in summer 1851, he probably had as good an education in experimental science as anyone in England.
Tyndall's early original work in physics was his experiments on magnetism and diamagnetic polarity, on which he worked from 1850 to 1856. His two most influential reports were the first two, co-authored with Knoblauch. One of them was entitled "The magneto-optic properties of crystals, and the relation of magnetism and diamagnetism to molecular arrangement", dated May 1850. The two described an inspired experiment, with an inspired interpretation. These and other magnetic investigations very soon made Tyndall known among the leading scientists of the day.[6] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1852. In his search for a suitable research appointment, he was able to ask the longtime editor of the leading German physics journal (Poggendorff) and other prominent men to write testimonials on his behalf. In 1853, he attained the prestigious appointment of Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics) at the Royal Institution in London, due in no small part to the esteem his work had garnered from Michael Faraday, then the leader of magnetic investigations at the Royal Institution.[7]
Beginning in the late 1850s, Tyndall studied the action of radiant energy on the constituents of air, and it led him onto several lines of inquiry, and his original research results included the following:[8]
As an indicator of his lifetime research output, an index of 19th century scientific research journals has John Tyndall as the author of more than 147 papers, with practically all of them dated between 1850 and 1884, which is an average of more than four papers a year over that 35-year period.[22]
Tyndall was an experimenter and laboratory apparatus builder, not an abstract model builder. But he did attempt to extend his studies on the heat-absorptive power of gases and vapors into a research program about molecules. That is one of the underlying agendas of his 1872 book Contributions to Molecular Physics in the Domain of Radiant Heat. It is also evident in the spirit of his widely read 1863 book Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion. Besides heat, he also saw phenomena of magnetism and sound propagation as reducible to molecular behaviors. Invisible molecular behaviors were the ultimate substrate of all physical activity. With this mindset, and his experiments, he outlined an account whereby differing types of molecules have differing absorptions of infrared radiation because their molecular structures give them differing oscillating resonances. He'd gotten into the oscillating resonances idea because he'd seen that any one type of molecule has differing absorptions at differing radiant frequencies and he was entirely persuaded that the only difference between one frequency and another is the frequency.[23] He'd also seen that the absorption behavior of molecules is quite different from that of the atoms composing the molecules — for example the gas nitric oxide absorbed more than a thousand times more infrared radiation than either nitrogen or oxygen.[24] In several kinds of experiments he showed that no matter whether a gas is a weak absorber of broad-spectrum radiant heat, it will strongly absorb the radiant heat coming from a separate body of the same type of gas.[25] That demonstrated a kinship between the molecular mechanisms of absorption and emission. Such a kinship was also in evidence in experiments by Balfour Stewart and others, cited and extended by Tyndall, that showed with respect to broad-spectrum radiant heat that molecules that are weak absorbers are weak emitters and strong absorbers are strong emitters.[26] (For example rock-salt is an exceptionally poor absorber of heat via radiation, and a good absorber of heat via conduction. When a plate of rock-salt is heated via conduction and let stand on an insulator, it takes an exceptionally long time to cool down; i.e., it's a poor emitter of infrared.) The kinship between absorption and emission was also consistent with some generic or abstract features of resonators.[27] The photochemical effect convinced Tyndall that the resonator could not be the molecule as a whole unit; it had to be some substructure, because otherwise the photochemical effect would be impossible.[28] But he was without testable ideas as to the form of this substructure, and did not partake in speculation in print. His promotion of the molecular mindset, and his efforts to experimentally expose what molecules are, has been discussed by one historian under the title "John Tyndall, The Rhetorician Of Molecularity".[29]
In his lectures at the Royal Institution Tyndall put a great value on — and was talented at producing — lively, visible demonstrations of physics concepts.[30] In one lecture, published later in one of his books, Tyndall demonstrated the propagation of light down through a stream of falling water via total internal reflection of the light. It was referred to as the "light fountain". It is historically significant today because it demonstrates the scientific foundation for modern fiber optic technology. During second half of the 20th century Tyndall was usually credited with being the first to make this demonstration. However, Jean-Daniel Colladon published a report of it in Comptes Rendus in 1842, and there's some suggestive evidence that Tyndall's knowledge of it came ultimately from Colladon and no evidence that Tyndall claimed to have originated it himself.[31]
Tyndall visited the Alps in 1856 for scientific reasons and ended up becoming a pioneering mountain climber. He visited the Alps almost every summer from 1856 onward, was a member of the very first mountaineering team to reach the top of the Weisshorn (1861), and led one of the early teams to reach the top of the Matterhorn (1868). He is thus one of the names associated with the "golden age of Alpinism", i.e., the Victorian era when many of the Alpine peaks were summited for the first time.[32]
In the Alps, Tyndall studied glaciers, and especially glacier motion. His views on glacial flow brought him into dispute with others, particularly James David Forbes and Forbes's student James Thomson. Much of the early scientific work had been done by Forbes, but Forbes at that time didn't know of the phenomenon of Regelation which was discovered a little later by Micheal Faraday. Regelation played a key role in Tyndall's explanation. Forbes didn't see regelation in the same way at all. Complicating their debate, a disagreement arose publicly over who deserved to get investigator credit for what. Articulate friends of Forbes, as well as Forbes himself, thought that Forbes should get the credit for most of the good science, whereas Tyndall thought the credit should be distributed more widely. Tyndall commented: "The idea of semi-fluid motion belongs entirely to Louis Rendu; the proof of the quicker central flow belongs in part to Rendu, but almost wholly to Louis Agassiz and Forbes; the proof of the retardation of the bed belongs to Forbes alone; while the discovery of the locus of the point of maximum motion belongs, I suppose, to me."[33] When Forbes and Tyndall were in the grave, their disagreement was continued by their respective official biographers. Everyone tried to be reasonable, but agreement wasn't attained. More disappointingly, aspects of glacier motion remained not understood or not proved.
Tyndall Glacier in Chile is named after John Tyndall, as is Mount Tyndall in California[34] and Mount Tyndall in Tasmania.[35]
Besides being a scientist, John Tyndall was a science teacher and evangelist for the cause of science. He spent a significant amount of his time disseminating science to the general public — contributing over the years to science columns in popular middle class periodicals such as the Athenaeum and the Saturday Review in the UK, and Popular Science Monthly in the USA; and giving hundreds of public lectures to non-specialist audiences at the Royal Institution. When he went on a public lecture tour in the USA in 1872, large crowds paid fees to hear him lecture about the nature of light.[36] A typical statement of Tyndall's reputation at the time is this from a London publication in 1878: "Following the precedent set by Faraday, Professor Tyndall has succeeded not only in original investigation and in teaching science soundly and accurately, but in making it attractive.... When he lectures at the Royal Institution the theatre is crowded."[37] Tyndall said of the occupation of teacher "I do not know a higher, nobler, and more blessed calling."[38] His greatest audience was gained ultimately through his books, most of which were not written for experts or specialists. He published 17 science books.[39] From the mid-1860s on, he was one of the world's most famous living physicists, due firstly to his skill and industry as a tutorialist. Most of his books were translated into German[40] and French[41] with his main tutorials staying in print in those languages for decades.
As an indicator of his teaching attitude, here are his concluding remarks to the reader at the end of a 200-page tutorial book (1872):[42] "Here, my friend, our labours close. It has been a true pleasure to me to have you at my side so long. In the sweat of our brows we have often reached the heights where our work lay, but you have been steadfast and industrious throughout, using in all possible cases your own muscles instead of relying upon mine. Here and there I have stretched an arm and helped you to a ledge, but the work of climbing has been almost exclusively your own. It is thus that I should like to teach you all things; showing you the way to profitable exertion, but leaving the exertion to you.... Our task seems plain enough, but you and I know how often we have had to wrangle resolutely with the facts to bring out their meaning. The work, however, is now done, and you are master of a fragment of that sure and certain knowledge which is founded on the faithful study of nature.... Here then we part. And should we not meet again, the memory of these days will still unite us. Give me your hand. Good bye."
As another indicator, here is the opening paragraph of his 350-page tutorial entitled Sound (1867): "In the following pages I have tried to render the science of acoustics interesting to all intelligent persons, including those who do not possess any special scientific culture. The subject is treated experimentally throughout, and I have endeavoured so to place each experiment before the reader that he should realise it as an actual operation." In the preface to the 3rd edition of this book he reports that earlier editions were translated into Chinese at the expense of the Chinese government; and translated into German under the supervision of Hermann von Helmholtz (a big name in the science of acoustics).[43] His first published tutorial, which was about glaciers (1860), similarly states: "The work is written with a desire to interest intelligent persons who may not possess any special scientific culture."
His most widely praised tutorial, and perhaps also his biggest seller, was the 550-page "Heat: a Mode of Motion" (1863; updated editions until 1880). It was in print for at least 50 years[44], and is in print today.
His three longest tutorials, namely Heat (1863), Sound (1867), and Light (1873), represented state-of-the-art experimental physics at the time they were written. Much of their contents were recent major innovations in the understanding of their respective subjects, which Tyndall was the first writer to present to a wider audience. One caveat is called for about the meaning of "state of the art". The books were devoted to laboratory science and they avoided mathematical analysis. In particular, they contain absolutely no infinitesimal calculus. Mathematical modeling using infinitesimal calculus, especially differential equations, was a component of the state-of-the-art understanding of heat, light and sound at the time.
The majority of the progressive and innovative British physicists of Tyndall's generation were conservative and orthodox on matters of religion. That includes for example James Joule, Balfour Stewart, James Clerk Maxwell, George Gabriel Stokes and William Thomson — all names investigating heat or light contemporaneously with Tyndall. These conservatives believed, and sought to strengthen the basis for believing, that religion and science were consistent and harmonious with each other. Tyndall, however, was a member of a club that vocally supported Darwin's theory of evolution and sought to strengthen the barrier, or separation, between religion and science. The most prominent member of this club was the anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley. Tyndall first met Huxley in 1851 and the two had a lifelong friendship. Chemist Edward Frankland and mathematician Thomas Archer Hirst, both of whom Tyndall had known since before going to university in Germany, were members too. Others included the political philosopher Herbert Spencer. See X-Club.
Though not nearly so prominent as Huxley in controversy over philosophical problems, Tyndall played his part in communicating to the educated public the virtues of having a clear separation between science (knowledge & rationality) and religion (faith & spirituality). As the elected president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1874, he gave a long keynote speech at the Association's annual meeting held that year in Belfast. The speech gave a favorable account of the history of evolutionary theories, mentioning Darwin's name favorably more than 20 times, and concluded by asserting that religious sentiment should not be permitted to "intrude on the region of knowledge, over which it holds no command". This was a hot topic. The newspapers carried the report of it on their front pages — in the British Isles, North America, even the European Continent — and many critiques of it appeared soon after. The attention and scrutiny increased the friends of the evolutionists' philosophical position, and brought it closer to mainstream ascendancy.[45]
In Rome the Pope in 1864 decreed that it was an error that "reason is the ultimate standard by which man can and ought to arrive at knowledge" and an error that "divine revelation is imperfect" in the Bible — and anyone maintaining those errors was to be "anathematized" — and in 1888 decreed as follows: "The fundamental doctrine of rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence.... A doctrine of such character is most hurtful both to individuals and to the State.... It follows that it is quite unlawful to demand, to defend, or to grant, unconditional [or promiscuous] freedom of thought, speech, writing, or religion."[46] Those principles and Tyndall's principles were profound enemies. Luckily for Tyndall he didn't need to get into a contest with them, in Britain, nor in most other parts of the world. Even in Italy, Huxley and Darwin were awarded honorary medals and most of the Italian governing class was hostile to the papacy.[47] But in Ireland during Tyndall's lifetime the majority of the population grew increasingly doctrinaire and vigorous in its Roman Catholicism and also grew stronger politically. It would've been a waste of everybody's time for Tyndall to debate the Irish Catholics, but he was active in the debate in England about whether to give the Catholics of Ireland more freedom to go their own way. Like the great majority of Irish-born scientists of the 19th century he opposed the Irish Home Rule movement. He had ardent views about it, which were published in newspapers and pamphlets.[48] For example in an opinion piece in The Times on 27 Dec 1890 he saw priests and Catholicism as "the heart and soul of this movement" and wrote that placing the non-Catholic minority under the dominion of "the priestly horde" would be "an unspeakable crime".[49] He tried unsuccessfully to get the UK's premier scientific society to denounce the Irish Home Rule proposal as contrary to the interests of science.[50]
In several essays included in his book Fragments of Science for Unscientific People, Tyndall attempted to dissuade people from the belief in miracles and the effectiveness of prayers. At the same time, though, he was not broadly anti-religious, and his writings leave no straightforward evidence that he was not a Christian or at least a Deist.[51]
Tyndall did not marry until age 55. His bride, Louisa Hamilton, whom he had first met in the Alps, was the 30-year-old daughter of a member of parliament (Lord Claud Hamilton, M.P.). The following year, 1877, they built a summer chalet at Belalp in the Swiss Alps. Before getting married Tyndall had been living for many years in an upstairs apartment at the Royal Institution and continued to live there after marriage until 1885 when a move was made to a house near Haslemere 45 miles southwest of London. The marriage was a happy one and without children. He retired from the Royal Institution at age 66 having complaints of ill health.
Tyndall became financially well-off from sales of his popular books and fees from his lectures (but there is no evidence that he owned commercial patents). For many years he got non-trivial payments for being a part-time scientific advisor to a couple of quasi-governmental agencies and partly donated the payments to charity. His successful lecture tour of the United States in 1872 brought him a substantial amount of dollars, all of which he promptly donated to a trustee for fostering science in America.[52] Late in life his money donations went most visibly to the Irish Unionist political cause.[53] When he died, his wealth was £22122.[54] For comparison's sake, the income of a police constable in London was about £80 per year at the time.[55]
In his last years Tyndall often took chloral hydrate to treat his insomnia. When bedridden and ailing, he died from an accidental[56] overdose of this drug at age 73, and was buried at Haslemere.[57] Afterwards, Tyndall's wife took possession of his papers and assigned herself as supervisor of an official biography of him. She dragged her feet on the project, however, and it was still unfinished when she died in 1940 aged 95.[58] The book eventually appeared in 1945, written by A. S. Eve and C. H. Creasey, whom Louisa Tyndall had authorized shortly before her death.
All of the above books can be freely downloaded at Archive.org.
John Tyndall (August 2, 1820 – December 4, 1893) was an Irish physicist.
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JOHN TYNDALL (1820-1893), British natural philosopher, was born in Co. Carlow, Ireland, on the 2nd of August 1820, his father being the son of a small landowner in poor circumstances, but a man of more than ordinary ability. With Darwin and 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.
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 Co. Carlow to a minor post (1839) in the Irish ordnance survey, thence (1842) to the English survey, attending mechanics' institute lectures at Preston in Lancashire. He then became for a time (1844) a railway engineer, and in 1847 a teacher at Queenwood College, Hants. Thence with much spirit, and in face of many difficulties, he betook himself, with his colleague Edward Frankland, to the university of Marburg (1848-1851), where, by intense application, he obtained his doctorate in two years. His inaugural dissertation was an essay on screw-surfaces.
Tyndall's first original work in physical science was in his experiments with regard to magnetism and diamagnetic polarity, on which he was chiefly occupied from 1850 to 1855. While he was still lecturing on natural philosophy at Queenwood College, his magnetic investigations made him known in the higher circles of the scientific world, and through the initiative of Sir E. Sabine, treasurer of the Royal Society, he was elected F.R.S. in June 1852. In 1850 he had made Faraday's acquaintance, and shortly before the Ipswich meeting of the British Association in 1851 he began a lasting friendship with T. H. 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 the 11th of February 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. In the following May he was chosen professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution, a post which exactly suited his striking gifts and made him a colleague of Faraday, whom in 1866 he succeeded as scientific adviser to the Trinity House and Board of Trade, and in 1867 as superintendent of the Royal Institution. His reverent attachment to Faraday is beautifully manifested in his memorial volume called Faraday as a Discoverer (1868).
The more original contributions which Tyndall made to science are dealt with elsewhere, in the articles concerned with the various subjects (see Heat, &c.). But his inquiries into glacier motion were notable alike for his association with Switzerland and for prolonged controversy with other men of science on the subject. In 1854, after the meeting of the British Association in Liverpool, a memorable visit occurred 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. Here the mountains seized him, and he became a constant visitor and one of the most intrepid and most resolute of explorers; among other feats of climbing he was the first to ascend the Weiss - horn (1861). The strong, vigorous, healthfulness and enjoyment which permeate the record of his Alpine work are magnificent, and traces of his influence remain in Switzerland to this day. The problem of the flow of glaciers occupied his attention for years, and his views brought him into acute conflict with others, particularly J. D. 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, 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: The idea of semi-fluid motion belongs entirely to Rendu; the proof of the quicker central flow belongs in part to Rendu, but almost wholly to Agassiz and Forbes; the proof of the retardation of the bed belongs to Forbes alone; while the discovery of the locus of the point of maximum motion belongs, I suppose, to me.
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 of this apparent viscosity James Thomson offered an independent explanation by the application of pure thermodynamical theory, which Tyndall considered inefficient to account for the facts he observed. It is unnecessary here to rake among the ashes of this prolonged dispute, but it may be noted that Helmholtz, who, in his lecture on "Ice and Glaciers," adopted Thomson's theory, 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).
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 manysided. He definitely established the absorptive power of clear aqueous vapour - a point of great meteorological significance. He made brilliant experiments elucidating the blue of the sky, 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 connexion with lighthouse and siren work, and he finally clinched the proof of what had been already substantially demonstrated by several others, viz. that germ-free air did not initiate putrefaction, and that accordingly "spontaneous generation" as ordinarily understood was a chimera (1875-1876). One practical outcome of these researches is the method now always adopted of sterilizing by a succession of gentle warmings, sufficient to kill the developed micro-organisms, instead of by one fierce heating attempting to attack the more refractory undeveloped germs of the same. This method of intermittent sterilization originated with Tyndall, and it was an important contribution to biological science and industrial practice.
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); Floating Matter in the Air (188x); On Sound (1867; revised 1875, 1883, 1893). 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).
It was on the whole the personality, however, rather than the discoverer, that was greatest in Tyndall. In the pursuit of pure 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 America (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, he 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, &c., with characteristic straightforwardness and vigour.
As a public speaker he 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. On the 4th of December 1893, having been accidentally given an overdose of chloral, he died at Hindhead.
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   | Six Lectures on Light - Six Lectures on Light by John Tyndall - Project Gutenberg |
| | VictorianWeb.org Page on Tyndall - John Tyndall (1820-1893) |
| | Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research - Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research |
| | Tyndall National Institute - Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork: Homepage | The Tyndall National Institute (Tyndall) was created in 2004 at the initiative of the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment and University College Cork (UCC) to bring together compl |
| | Faraday as a Discoverer - Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall - Project Gutenberg |
| | Biography of John Tyndall at ''The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research'' - A short biography of John Tyndall |
| | Works by John Tyndall - Internet Archive Search: ("john tyndall") OR ("tyndall, john") |
| | The Glaciers of the Alps - Internet Archive: Free Download: The glaciers of the Alps. Being a narrative of excursions and ascents, an account of the origin and phenomena of glaciers and an exposition of the physical principles to which they are related |
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