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. 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
and the first to ascend the Weisshorn. 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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