John Tyndall

John Tyndall , 1820-93, British physicist, b. Ireland. He became (1853) professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution and in 1867 succeeded Michael Faraday, his friend and colleague, as superintendent there. His chief researches were in the fields of light, sound, and radiant heat. He made significant studies of Alpine glaciers. He was known as a lecturer and writer, and his gifted expositions of science for the layman were widely translated. The Tyndall effect (see colloid ) is named for him.

Tyndall, John (1820–1893) Irish physicist, who correctly suggested that the blue colour of the sky is due to the scattering of light by particles of dust and other colloidal particles. By 1881, Tyndall helped disprove the theory of spontaneous generation by showing that food does not decay in germ-free air.

Tyndall, John (1820–93). Physicist, lecturer, and foe of organized religion, Tyndall grew up in Ireland; after surveying and teaching, he went to Marburg in 1848 to study with R. W. Bunsen. In 1853 he got a professorship at the Royal Institution, and from 1867 followed Michael Faraday as superintendent. He worked on heat and on bacteria, translated important papers from the German, and in 1874 as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science delivered in Belfast an address declaring that scientists would wrest the whole of cosmology from theologians. He was an ally of T. H. Huxley. Tyndall was an expert and enthusiastic mountaineer (and student of glaciers), calculating how high the energy in a ham sandwich would take him; his writings about the alps are suffused with pantheism. His ice-axe is preserved in the Zermatt museum.

David Knight