John Tyndall - unsung hero

John Tyndall (1820-1893) was born in the Garrison House, Leighlinbridge, Co. Carlow and he received his early education in Carlow before going to work for the Ordnance Survey, first in Ireland and later in England. While he worked he attended lectures at the local Mechanics Institute, where members of the working class could receive basic instruction in the sciences. In 1843 he was dismissed from the survey for protesting the working conditions of the Irish labourers. He moved on to work as a surveyor for the railroad industry. In 1847 he became a teacher at Edmundson School, Queenwood College, in Hampshire, where one of the first teaching laboratories in Britain was set up. There he became interested in the teaching of practical science and engineering.

In 1848 Tyndall went to Marburg University in Germany to carry out his Ph.D. studies. At that time Ph.D. degrees had only just been introduced and the German Universities were then world leaders in scientific research training. Tyndall studied Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics. He completed his degree in two years and went on to do research in Berlin, where he mingled with many of the great German scientists of that time.

He returned to Britain in 1851 but was unable to find a university position due to his unconventional education and his working class background. Finally in 1853, after a brilliant lecturing performance he was appointed professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution in London. There he developed his talents for lecturing and research and he took over from Michael Faraday as Superintendent in 1867.

From his time spent in Germany, Tyndall had an interest in the behaviour of crystals in a magnetic field. This led him to study the compression of crystal substances. From this he took an interest in glaciers and was a pioneer in the sport of mountaineering. He also studied solar heat and radiation. He was particularly interested in the interaction of heat, light and atmospheric gases and he made a study of the scattering of light by particles in the atmosphere. In fact, it was Tyndall who first explained that the sky is blue because the different wavelengths of sunlight are scattered to different degrees by the atmosphere. Having established that there were dust particles in the air, he showed that the air contained living microorganisms. He was an early advocate of Pasteur's germ theory of disease.

His scientific brilliance is highlighted by the number of scientific phenomena named after him, including the Tyndall effect, the Tyndall cone, Tyndall scattering, Tyndallisation and the Tyndallo-meter. Tyndall was one of the first people to coin the term "physicist" to differentiate himself from the traditional "natural philosopher".

He also wrote for newspapers and magazines and helped to found the now famous scientific journal Nature in 1869. Tyndall grew famous for both his theatrical style of lecturing and his public battle with famous figures. Tyndall condemned the attitude of the catholic hierarchy in Ireland to Science and proposed that science and reason, rather than faith are the only acceptable guides to truth. Tyndall spent much of his free time at his house in the Alps.

Eventually he died from an overdose of chloral hydrate administered in error by his wife at the age of seventy-three!

As a researcher, an educator, a lecturer and a controversialist, he played a major role in both the professionalism and popularisation of science.