John Tyndall (scientist)

Irish physicist

• Born: August 2, 1820
• Birthplace: Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland
• Died: December 4, 1893
• Place of death: Hindhead, Surrey, England

A promoter of science in Victorian-era England, Tyndall laid the groundwork for later scientific developments in atmospheric sciences. He developed the idea of an “atmospheric envelope,” which suggested that water vapor and carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere retain heat radiated by the Sun (the “greenhouse effect”).

Primary field: Physics

Primary invention: Fireman’s respirator

Early Life

Born in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland, the son of a local police officer and small landowner, John Tyndall attended a common school in County Carlow. He joined the mapmaking Irish Ordnance Survey as a draftsman at age nineteen. His surveying experience later took him to England as an employee of the English Ordnance Survey beginning in 1842, after he was selected as one of the best draftsmen in his department. While there, Tyndall attended lectures at the Preston Mechanics’ Institute. His surveying work extended the British national network of railways during the 1840’s. By 1844, Tyndall was working as a railway engineer.

Tyndall played many roles during his career, including surveyor, draftsman, surveyor, professor of physics, mathematician, mountaineer, geologist, atmospheric scientist, author, and popular public lecturer. He left surveying in 1847 to teach mathematics at Queenwood College, in Hampshire, but soon enrolled at Germany’s Marburg University, where he studied science between 1848 and 1851 with a colleague, Edward Frankland, and the mathematician Thomas Hirst. Tyndall studied under Professor Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, and his dissertation was on screw surfaces. He completed three years’ worth of graduate work in two.

Tyndall married Louisa Hamilton, a daughter of Lord Claud Hamilton, in 1876. The next year, the new couple built a small cottage at Belalp in the Swiss Alps above the Rhone Valley. Eight years later, they also built a home at Hindhead, near Haslemere in Surrey, England.

Life’s Work

A prolific lecturer and writer about many scientific subjects, Tyndall was the first person to calculate quantitative, spectroscopic measurements describing ways in which water vapor and carbon dioxide trap thermal radiation. Tyndall also theorized that Earth’s climate could warm or cool in proportion to the amount of carbon dioxide and other trace gases in the atmosphere. As a student of glacial movement, he also speculated in 1861 that a decline in the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels might have played an important role in the onset of ice ages. Tyndall also invented several precision instruments to measure phenomena about which he theorized. During his working life, he published at least sixteen books and 145 scientific papers.

Tyndall’s first scientific work, between 1850 and 1855, involved experiments on magnetism and diamagnetic polarity, undertaken while he was teaching at Queenwood College. This work brought him to the attention of well-known scientists, and he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in June, 1852.

While he studied glaciers, Tyndall also trained himself as a world-class mountain climber. In 1861, he became the first person to reach the summit of the Weisshorn in the Swiss Alps. Tyndall nearly reached the top of the Matterhorn in 1864, failing by only a few hundred feet because of a storm. A year later, Edward Whymper reached that goal. The penultimate peak of the Matterhorn was named “Pic Tyndall” for him.

In 1862, Tyndall succeeded the popular teacher Michael Faraday, giving popular physics lectures at London’s Royal Institution (which he later directed), as he became one of the best-known scientists of the Victorian era. He had first met Faraday in 1850, and he later celebrated the physicist in a book, Faraday as a Discoverer, published in 1868. Tyndall also was a member of the X Club, composed of renowned scientists, along with other notables, including Thomas Henry Huxley and Herbert Spencer. By this time, the nature of atmospheric gases had become Tyndall’s major scientific inquiry.

Tyndall also was a tireless public intellectual, a public advocate of science who wrote for a number of popular magazines in addition to his popular lectures. He toured the United States during 1872 and 1873, drawing large audiences. Tyndall earned several thousand dollars from his American tour that was donated to scientific work in the United States. He also donated money for a new technical school in County Carlow.

During 1874, Tyndall gave a speech, now known as the “Belfast Address,” at the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting. This speech became a cardinal citation in arguments that the rational, materialist methods of scientific inquiry (usually called “natural law,” as opposed to church law) were superior to religious or other explanations for phenomena. He addressed the brewing controversy over Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution that continue to incite political controversy today.

In his later years, Tyndall suffered from insomnia to a point that imperiled his health. On December 4, 1893, at Hindhead, Tyndall died after Louisa accidentally gave him an overdose of chloral hydrate (which he had been being used to induce sleep). As he died, Tyndall moaned that the drug was killing him. Louisa searched frantically (and fruitlessly) for an antidote. She summoned a doctor who gave Tyndall an ineffective emetic as he died.

Louisa spent the rest of her life looking after Tyndall’s reputation, including clashes with several commissioned biographers whose work did not meet her expectations. Having chosen Leonard Huxley (and later A. S. Eve and C. H. Creasey) to write John’s biography, Louisa refused them access, for unstated reasons, to some of his private papers. She also purged her own diaries of material on her relationship with him and otherwise made the compilation of an accurate life story difficult. The parts of these diaries that survived her editing have been archived in the Royal Institution of London.

Impact

Tyndall became very well known in his time, in part because of his writings, which ranged from scientific papers describing his discoveries to popular essays on scientific subjects, as well as religion, literature, and travel, including his passion for mountaineering in the Alps. Tyndall went out of his way to present science to children. He received five honorary doctorates and was a member of thirty-five scientific societies.

Tyndall’s own work is important as well, because he laid the groundwork for later scientific developments in atmospheric sciences that provide the basic intellectual infrastructure for studies of Earth’s climatic heating and cooling cycles. His work on purification led to methods of sterilization for liquid water and other liquids that involve heating to the boiling point. His work on sterilization also became central to the practice of medicine.

Tyndall also found ways to filter air so that it was “optically pure,” containing very few microorganisms, for experimental purposes. His “pure air” prevented most putrefaction, or decay. Studies of this type of air were used by other scientists to refine Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of disease. Tyndall refined his pure air many times, further reducing its impurities. He is also believed to have been the first scientist to measure urban pollution, using samples of his own urine to measure accumulation of various toxins (which caused the urine to putrefy).

Tyndall also pioneered methods to monitor London’s air quality at a time when the city was prone to noxious, sometimes deadly, smogs that combined natural, stagnant fog with coal smoke. He was also the first to show that ozone is a cluster of three oxygen atoms. Before his discovery, many scientists believed that ozone was a hydrogen compound.

Tyndall invented a fireman’s respirator, a hood that filtered smoke and gas. He was the first person to characterize scientifically the scattering of light by dust and large molecules in the air, a process that became known as the “Tyndall effect.” His experiments also helped explain why the sky is blue (from Rayleigh scattering of sunlight).

Bibliography

Arrhenius, Svante. “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground.” The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 5th series (April, 1896): 237-276. This landmark essay developed the theory of heat retention in the atmosphere by carbon dioxide, refining Tyndall’s earlier work.

Brock, W. H. John Tyndall: Essays on a Natural Philosopher. Dublin: Royal Dublin Society, 1981. These essays describe an active mind, a prolific writer in both scientific and popular realms, and a sportsman; his legacy in many fields is also developed.

Eve, A. S., and C. H. Creasey. Life and Work of John Tyndall. London: Macmillan, 1945. Probably the most complete biography of Tyndall, completed despite many impediments by his wife, who refused to release vital papers, especially those bearing on her own relationship with Tyndall.

Tyndall, John. Fragments of Science for Unscientific People: A Series of Detached Essays, Lectures, and Reviews. 1870. Reprint. New York: Appleton and Company, 2001. This collection of Tyndall’s articles in the popular press of his time illustrates his unique ability to communicate science to wide audiences.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Glaciers of the Alps. 1860. Reprint. Boston: Adamant Media, 2004. Tyndall was a well-known mountain climber as well as a student of glaciers. This book was a result of his scientific studies on the Alps.