John Tyndall: An Insatiable Thirst For Knowledge
(Part 1)
John Tyndall’s scientific reputation rests firmly on his demonstration and measurement of the absorption of ‘radian heat’ - thermal radiation – by gases. To put it simply, he explained the ability of the Earth’s atmosphere to trap heat. Now known as the ‘greenhouse effect’, it results in our planet having a temperature suitable for life. His work has had a major impact on our understanding of the atmosphere, weather and climate.
Tyndall was born in the village of Leighlinbridge, in Ireland, on 2nd of August. Because of a fire at the Public Records Office in Dublin that destroyed the parish records the exact year of his birth is not known. Tyndall gave conflicting information at different times about his birth year, but he finally settled on the year 1820. Both his parents came from relatively prosperous families; his father was a Protestant and his mother’s family were Quakers. Given his background, Tyndall developed an intense antipathy to the Church of Rome; it’s an irony therefore that one of the people who influenced the trajectory of his life was a Catholic teacher of high repute, who was coming from the Irish hedge education system, the charismatic John Conwill.
The hedge schools were developed after the introduction of the infamous Penal Laws, a series of anti-Catholic laws, imposed in an attempt to force Irish Catholics and Protestant dissenters to accept the established Anglican Church. They were that they sound like. Lessons were sometimes conducted in secret by Irish teachers in barns or out in the countryside, often behind hedges. When a Protestant minister heard that the young Tyndall was going to a Roman Catholic teacher, he paid a visit to John’s father, who exclaimed: “Reverend Sir, if Conwill taught upon the altar steps, I would send my son to him, as I have no doubt, but he will receive from Conwill a fine secular education that will fit him for life.” John Conwill, an able mathematician himself, taught the young John Tyndall algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, but also grammar and literature. He also taught him the rudiments of surveying. It became his passport out of Ireland.
John Tyndall by Maull & Polyblank albumen carte-de-visite, early-mid 1860s NPG x45495 © National Portrait Gallery, London
The Surveyor
In 1840, Tyndall managed to secure a post as civil assistant in the Ordnance Survey Office at Youghal, Co. in Cork. He worked hard and soon he received a pay rise, not only because of the quality of his work but also as an incentive to prevent him from leaving for the English Tithe Survey, once he had trained. It didn’t work. In August 1842, Tyndall left Ireland for the first time to work for the English Survey. The working days in England were long, but Tyndall’s thirst for knowledge was also insatiable. He used all the time he could spare to attend lectures on a wide range of sciences at the Mechanics Institute in Preston and he took French lessons every evening, so that could read the work of many ‘clever engineers.’
Working conditions at that time in England were intolerable and challenged Tyndall’s political ideals. Only a few days after his arrival in Preston-where the average age of death was just 19, he witnessed political protests on the streets and the violence committed during these protests had a profound impact on him. He was also inspired by Thomas Carlyle, a provocative historian and social commentator, and one of the most visible and influential public intellectuals who railed the treatment of workers, which he compared to the conditions of slaves.
The deep inequalities and his sense of injustice about the Survey, the insufficient pay and the failure to provide an allowance during sickness in particular, spurred Tyndall to write the first of what became five open letters to the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, based on the information that he and his colleagues, Ginty and McLachlan were collecting. The letters which were published in the Liverpool Mercury under the pseudonym ‘Spectator’, led to his dismissal. There was no work for Tyndall in England. He returned to Ireland in December 1843, where he could find sporadic work. He was now twenty-three years old, a young man with a burning zeal against injustice and oppression. He was still working hard, studying French and reading widely and he was sowing onions, turnips and lettuces in the garden. Soon, his luck was about to change.
Britain in the mid-1840s was on the cusp of ‘railway mania’, with a fierce competition between rival companies to secure priority. Surveyors were sought after and Tyndall’s experience secured him a post with the Manchester engineering firm of Nevins and Lawton. He left Ireland for second time. His first appointment was in Staffordshire near Tutbury, and then in Bedford to work for the proposed Bedford and Ely Railway. His task was to measure the ‘levels’, or height of the land, to find the best route for a railway. When this finished, he received instruction to work in the proposed West Yorkshire Railway and for the next three years, the textile town of Halifax would be his home.
On August 1847, after accepting George Edmondson’s proposal for a teaching job at a new school, Tyndall ended his employment as a surveyor. The second phase of his life was now completed, and the third was about to begin.
Queenwood College and the University of Marburg
George Edmondson, a Quaker and innovative educator, had been taking over a building in Hampshire, to run a new, revolutionary school. Queenwood College was one of the first schools in England to adopt the practical and laboratory work in the teaching of applied science. Its curriculum also included surveying and railway engineering. Tyndall’s duties were to teach mathematics, mechanics and surveying, both in the class and in the field. His activities though were not limited to teaching; the pursue of knowledge and personal growth were as important – or more – as teaching. He attended Edward Frankland’s (he later became one of the most prominent chemists of his time) lectures on chemistry, in geology, botany and, later on, on hydrostatics and heat, and he read Liebig’s work on atomic theory, as well as Faraday’s objections. 1
Tyndall had made a lot of progress on his shelf-development, but, clearly, it wasn’t enough. He was determined to acquire more knowledge and to get a degree. Frankland has already worked for three months with Bunsen at the University of Marburg in Hesse, and often spoke of the excellent education in Germany. He was planning to start a Ph.D there in the autumn and he thought Tyndall could also do the same as Marburg University did not then require a previous degree to complete a doctorate. 2 Tyndall decided to use his savings from his work as a surveyor to pursue a Ph.D in natural sciences and after the end of the school term, the two schoolteachers left for Germany. They travelled more than 800km by rail and stagecoach, and encounted several delays and difficulties caused by the revolutions that swept Europe that summer. They finally arrived in Marburg in the fall of 1848.
After two years of intensive study, he was awarded his degree.[4]But his financial problems-his savings were almost gone-caused him great anxiety. At this point his friend Thomas Hirst came to the rescue. Hirst was a fellow surveyor, who, following Tyndall’s example, he studied chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the University of Marburg. After the death of his mother, he was left with some money and he was able to offer as a loan to Tyndall £20 (and later a further loan of £40) to continue his research. He stayed in Germany until June 1851, when with a Ph.D. in natural sciences and “with a glow of pride and gratitude”, he returned to England.3
Due to his financial struggles, Tyndall agreed to return to Queenwood College. Despite his long teaching hours, he managed to find time for research. The same year, in 1851, he presented four papers at the British Association, but most importantly, he met Faraday, who, as he wrote in his journal, “he expressed a strong desire to hear my paper on Diamagnetism.” His fate was decided on a Friday evening, on February 11th, 1853. That evening Tyndall gave a lecture before the Royal Institution which “took his audience by storm.” He argued that magnetism in bismuth was not inherent but induced by a magnetic field – a view which holds today. The lecture was summarised in the Philosophical Magazine on April 1853, under the heading of “Proceedings of the Royal Institution” and Tyndall won Faraday’s appreciation. But Faradays’ presence in the lecture presented another opportunity for Tyndall. He was offered the Professorship of Natural Philosophy of the Royal Institution, with a salary beginning at £100 a year and with nineteen lectures to give during the annual session. At last he would have time to think and ample opportunities for research.
The scientific community was split in the mid-nineteen century between those, following John Dalton, who believed in the physical reality of the atom, and those like Faraday, who considered atoms as ‘atmospheres of force’ grouped around a point.
In fact, in the 1840s, there was no equivalent to the doctoral degree at any British university. In fact, many prominent British researchers lacked any university degree at all and had learned their science through apprenticeships or self-education.
Tyndall’s thesis was a mathematical subject, titled, “On a Screw Surface with Inclined Generetrix and on the Conditions of Equilibrium on Such Surfaces.”
Bibliography
Eve, A., Creasey, C. H., & Schuster, L. (1945). Life and Work of John Tyndall . London: MacMillan & Co.
Jackson, R. (2018). The ascent of John Tyndall. Oxford: Oxford University Press.