John Tyndall

John Tyndall FRS was an important 19th-century Irish physicist. His scientific prominence developed in the 1850s as a result of his research into diamagnetism. Later, he produced discoveries in the fields of infrared radiation and air physical characteristics, establishing the link between atmospheric CO2 and what is now known as the greenhouse effect in 1859. Tyndall also authored over a dozen science books that introduced a large number of people to cutting-edge 19th-century experimental...See more

John Tyndall FRS was an important 19th-century Irish physicist. His scientific prominence developed in the 1850s as a result of his research into diamagnetism. Later, he produced discoveries in the fields of infrared radiation and air physical characteristics, establishing the link between atmospheric CO2 and what is now known as the greenhouse effect in 1859. Tyndall also authored over a dozen science books that introduced a large number of people to cutting-edge 19th-century experimental physics. From 1853 to 1887, he taught physics at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1868. Tyndall was born at Leighlinbridge, Co. Carlow, Ireland. His father was a local police constable, descended from Gloucestershire emigrants who arrived in southeast Ireland around 1670. Tyndall attended the local schools (Ballinabranna Primary School) in County Carlow until his late teens and was most likely an assistant teacher near the conclusion of his tenure there. Technical drawing and mathematics were particularly important subjects in school, with some applications to land surveying. In his late teens, he was engaged as a draftsman by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in 1839, and he later went to the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain in 1842. See less