Person Tyndall; John (1820 - 1893); natural philosopher Tyndall John natural philosopher 1820 - 1893 British Male Leighlin Bridge, County Carlow, Ireland 02 August 1820 Hindhead, Surrey 04 December 1893

Queenwood College, Stockbridge (1852)

Natural philosophy Microbiology Education: PhD Career: Worked as a Surveyor with the Ordnance Survey in Ireland from 1839, then to northern England, being dismissed for complaints about pay and conditions in November 1843. Railway Surveyor in Manchester and Halifax 1844-1847. Joined staff of Queenswood Schook in Hampshire in August 1847. Taught at Queenwood College, Hampshire (to 1853). Went with Edward Frankland to Marburg in 1848 to study in Robert Bunsen's laboratory for a Ph.D. where he first heard of diamagnetism. In 1859, his laboratory experiments showed that water vapour and carbon dioxide absorb infra-red radiation and that they could therefore affect the climate of the Earth. As soon as his paper was published in 1861 in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Society', he put out a press release for the London newspapers explaining that this result implied that all past climate changes were now understood and all future climate changes could be predicted simply from a knowledge of the concentrations of these 'greenhouse' gases. Tyndall restricted himself to describing his experiments and simply linking it to work of Fourier a few decades earlier. It took more than a century before the credible quantitative estimates of these effects and their influence on past and possibly future climates were made, along with good enough observations of the gases to know that they have (and continue) to change significantly. The beginning of climate science's history starts with John Tyndall, who first established the concept of a greenhouse gas. In the 1850s, Tyndall showed that certain gases, particularly carbon dioxide and water vapour, had the distinctive property of being highly transparent to visible light, but mostly opaque to the infrared. In the Earth's atmosphere, these gases allow light to come in from the Sun, but trap heat. Tyndall understood this as a very important fact about the Earth, because without this natural greenhouse effect, the Earth would be as cold as the Moon or Mars. Royal Society roles: VP 1879-1880 Medals and prizes: Rumford Medal 1864 Lectures: Bakerian 1855, 1861, 1864, 1881 Fellow 03/06/1852 Sources: Bulloch's Roll; DNB; DSB Obituaries: Proc Roy Soc 1894 vol 55 pp xviii-xxxiv signed by E F References: Sir Brian Pippard, FRS, 'Schoolmaster-Fellows and the campaign for science education' in NR 2002 vol 56 pp 63-81 J W Haas, 'The Reverend Dr William Henry Dallinger, FRS (1839-1909)' in NR 2000 vol 54 pp 53-65 Maria Yamalidou, 'John Tyndall, the Rhetorician of Molecularity. Part One. Crossing the Boundary Towards the Invisible' in NR 1999 vol 53 pp 231-242, plate Maria Yamalidou, 'John Tyndall, the Rhetorician of Molecularity. Part Two. Questions Put to Nature' in NR 1999 vol 53 pp 319-331 Roy M MacLeod, 'Of Medals and Men: A Reward System in Victorian Science 1826-1914' in NR 1971 vol 26 pp 81-105 J S Rowlinson, 'The Theory of Glaciers' in NR 1971 vol 26 pp 189-204 J T Lloyd, 'Background to the Joule-Mayer Controversy' in NR 1970 vol 25 pp 211-225, plate Roy M MacLeod, 'The X-Club: A Social Network of Science in Late-Victorian England' in NR 1969 vol 24 pp 305-322 J S Rowlinson, 'A national treasure house. <i>'The common purposes of life': science and society at the Royal Institution of Great Britain</i> ed Frank A J L James ' in NR 2004 vol 58 pp 105-106 Vanity Fair 06 April 1872 Roland Jackson, 'John Tyndall and the Royal Medal that was never struck' in NR 2014 vol 68, no 2, pp 151-164 ©The Royal Society International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) - Ottawa 1996 ISBN 0-9696035-3-3 National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997 https://pictures.royalsociety.org/image-rs-9262 2 Aug 1820 - 4 Dec 1893 NA8293 21/11/2001 Andyg Martind 21/07/2025 RS_NET\VirginiaM Yes http://viaf.org/viaf/46802617 eb6b2954-c488-4e66-9373-38620d3ce7d4