John Tyndall

John Tyndall (b. c. 1820–d. 1893) was one of the most influential scientists of the Victorian era. Born in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland, Tyndall’s father (also John) was a struggling shoemaker and leather dealer. In 1839 John Jr. joined the Irish Ordinance Survey as a civil assistant. In August 1842 he was transferred to the English Survey in Preston but dismissed in November 1843 when he protested the inefficiency of the Survey’s administration and its unfairness to the Irish assistants. In August 1847 he accepted an appointment as teacher of mathematics at Queenwood College in Hampshire but left after one year to earn his doctoral degree at Marburg University, Germany. He returned to England in 1851, taking up his old position at Queenwood while he looked for a scientific post. In 1853 he was elected Professor of Natural Philosophy of the Royal Institution, where he remained for the rest of his scientific career. Tyndall’s climb up the social ladder from humble family circumstances was capped in spectacular fashion when, in 1867, he succeeded Michael Faraday as Superintendent of the Royal Institution. Tyndall’s life cannot be summed up so simply. He lived several interconnected lives. The first was spent primarily in his laboratory at the Royal Institution; the second he spent with mountain guides, suspended high on the sides of alpine peaks; and the third was either in front of fashionable audiences or behind the scenes, directing and shaping the sciences of the day. Along with being one of the premier physicists in the nineteenth century, John Tyndall was also one of the figures largely responsible for the growth of mountaineering as a sport. He narrowly missed being the first to summit the Matterhorn, then thought to be entirely inaccessible. Mountaineering was not merely a sport to Tyndall; he conducted important scientific experiments whenever he climbed. Owing to his flamboyant lecturing style, he also became well known as an eloquent public speaker on science to fashionable audiences. Along with biologist T. H. Huxley, philosopher Herbert Spencer, and botanist J. D. Hooker, Tyndall sought to professionalize science, arguing that naturalistic, rather than theistic, explanations could (and should) account for the workings of nature. They also defended Darwin during the debates about evolution. This influential group of scientists formed the X Club in 1864 in an attempt to direct the course of British science and to lobby for its support in the halls of government.