Rising from a humble background in rural southern Ireland, John
Tyndall became one of the foremost physicists, communicators of
science, and polemicists in mid-Victorian Britain. In science, he
is known for his important work in meteorology, climate science,
magnetism, acoustics, and bacteriology. His discoveries include the
physical basis of the warming of the Earth's atmosphere (the basis
of the greenhouse effect), and establishing why the sky is blue.
But he was also a leading communicator of science, drawing great
crowds to his lectures at the Royal Institution, while also playing
an active role in the Royal Society. Tyndall moved in the highest
social and intellectual circles. A friend of Tennyson and Carlyle,
as well as Michael Faraday and Thomas Huxley, Tyndall was one of
the most visible advocates of a scientific world view as tensions
grew between developing scientific knowledge and theology. He was
an active and often controversial commentator, through letters,
essays, speeches, and debates, on the scientific, political, and
social issues of the day, with strongly stated views on Ireland,
religion, race, and the role of women. Widely read in America, his
lecture tour there in 1872-73 was a great success. Roland Jackson
paints a picture of an individual at the heart of Victorian science
and society. He also describes Tyndall's importance as a pioneering
mountaineer in what has become known as the Golden Age of Alpinism.
Among other feats, Tyndall was the first to traverse the
Matterhorn. He presents Tyndall as a complex personality, full of
contrasts, with his intense sense of duty, his deep love of poetry,
his generosity to friends and his combativeness, his persistent
ill-health alongside great physical stamina driving him to his
mountaineering feats. Drawing on Tyndall's letters and journals for
this first major biography of Tyndall since 1945, Jackson explores
the legacy of a man who aroused strong opinions, strong loyalties,
and strong enmities throughout his life.
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