NATURE 



299 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 1874 



SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES 

 IV. — John Tyndall 



IN the valleys of Gloucestershire may still be seen a few 

 clothiers' mills, the residue of a once extensive industry. 

 Almost exactly two centuries ago some members of the 

 Tyndall family inhabiting these valleys, and engaged for 

 the most part in this industry, crossed over to the opposite 

 coast of Ireland. This fact, the date of which is fixed by 

 Mr. Greenfield, coupled with family tradition, points to 

 the origin of Prof. Tyndall. In Ireland the Tyndalls 

 fared variously, dividing themselves into magistrates, 

 aldermen, medical men, farmers, and tradesmen. To 

 the last, and indeed to the poorest of the last. Prof. 

 Tyndall's father belonged. He was a man of singular 

 force of intellect and independence of character, and he 

 kept his son at school until his nineteenth year. In 

 accordance with transmitted family habit. Prof. Tyndall, 

 when you;ig, was exercised in all the subtleties of the 

 controversy between Protestantism and Catholicism. In 

 1839 he quitted school to join a division of the Ordnance 

 Survey, with which he remained connected for nearly five 

 years. His excellent chief, now his intimate friend, 

 General George Wynne, R.E., gave him an opportunity 

 of mastering all the details of the survey, in the office and 

 in the field. For four years subsequently he was engaged on 

 railway work ; and while thus employed met Mr. H irst, who 

 is now the Director of Studies in the Royal Naval College, 

 Greenwich, who afterwards joined him in Marburg, and 

 with whom his relations are more those of a brother than 

 a friend. In 1S47, with a view to self-improvement, he 

 accepted a post in Queenwood College, Hampshire, where 

 Dr. Frankland was chemist; and in 1848 they went 

 together to the University of Marburg, Hesse Cassel. 

 Bunsen and others had rendered the little University cele- 

 brated ; and to Bunsen, whose lectures he attended and 

 in whose laboratory he worked. Prof. Tyndall owes obli- 

 gations never to be forgotten. He found in Germany a 

 second home. With Stegmann he studied mathematics ; 

 he heard Gerling lecture on physics, and subsequently 

 Knoblauch, who, preceded by a distinguished reputation, 

 and accompanied by a choice collection of instruments, 

 came to Marburg as Extraordinary Professor when 

 Tyndall was there. Prof Knoblauch, in conjunction 

 with whom Tyndall subsequently conducted various in- 

 quiries on diamagnetism, supports his old friend and 

 pupil in Belfast ; Wiedemann is also there, and Bunsen 

 would have been there if he could. Tyndall subsequently 

 worked in the laboratory of Prof. Magnus in Berlin. In 

 1S51 he accompanied Prof. Huxley to the meeting of the 

 British Association at Ipswich, and thus commenced a 

 friendship which has never faltered to the present hour. 

 Dr. Bence Jones heard of Tyndall in Berlin, and, always 

 alert in the promotion of science and in aiding those who 

 pursued it, had him invited in 1S53 to give a Friday 

 evening lecture at the Royal Institution. Soon after- 

 wards, on the proposal of Faraday, Tyndall was ap- 

 pointed Professor of Physics in the Institution, where he 

 still remains. 



In 1852 he was one of the secretaries of the Physical 

 Vol. .X.— Kg. 251 



Section of the British Association, which then n\et for the 

 first time in Belfast. Its president was Col. Sabine, to 

 whom Tyndall was indebted in those days for various acts 

 of kindness and encouragement, and who took, unsoli- 

 cited, charge of his candidature for the Royal Society. 

 But Tyndall's earliest scientific memory happens to be 

 associated with Belfast. In the school to which he was 

 sent in his childhood three different arithmetical treatises 

 were made use of, one written by Gough and another by 

 Voster ; but young Tyndall was the only boy in the 

 school who could speak of his Thomson. The first germ 

 of science was dropped into Prof. Tyndall's mind by the 

 father of Sir William Thomson, who was then Professor 

 of Mathematics in the Belfast Institution. He also 

 remembers distinctly, many years afterwards, reading in 

 a Glasgow magazine about Davy's experiments on Ra- 

 diant Heat, and the longing which they excited in him to 

 be able to do something of the kind. With the very 

 apparatus there figured Prof Tyndall now illustrates his 

 own lectures. In the "Kildare Street Schools," to which he 

 was sent when a little boy, he learned very little, being, 

 indeed fonder of play than of school. His first serious 

 application to study was under a clever teacher of a 

 national school named John Conwill, with whom he 

 mastered Euclid, some algebra, conic sections, and plane 

 trigonom.etry. Prof. Tyndall is now about fifty-four years of 

 age. He was born in 1820 in the village of Leighlin Bridge, 

 County Carlow, situated on the Barrow, but a fragment 

 of which only now remains. When a boy he was expert at 

 climbing trees ; he was a good swimmer, a good runner, 

 and though not unfrequently thrashed by an antagonist, a 

 fair fighter. His first mountain experience was among 

 the hills of Westmoreland cight-and-twenty years ago ; 

 his first visit to the Alps was in 1S49 ! ^'^ second visit, in 

 company with the present President of the Royal Society 

 and Prof. Huxley, was in 1856 ; and he has continued to 

 visit them every year since. In 1859, having paid his 

 summer visit, he reached the Montanvert at the end of 

 December and determined the winter motion of the Mer 

 de Glace. At the Bel Alp, this year, he prepared his 

 address to the British Association. 



That our readers may have the oppor; unity of 

 knowing the opinion of an eminent continental physi- 

 cist as to the importance of good popular expositions 

 of scientific subjects, and as to the special talent which 

 Prof. Tyndall has shown in this direction, we give some 

 extracts from a preface to the recently published German 

 translation of Tyndall's " Fragments of Science," which 

 the writer. Processor Helmholtz, has been good enough to 

 revise and send to us for that purpose. 



The awakening desire for scientific instruction, ever 

 finding new expression among the educated classes of 

 all European countries, we must consider not merely 

 as a striving after new forms of amusement, or a 

 mere empty and barren curiosity ; it is rather a well- 

 justified intellectual necessity, at.d is in close connec- 

 tioii with the most important springs of mental develop- 

 ment in these times. The natural sciences h.ave became 

 a powerful influence in the formation of the social, in- 

 dustrial, and political life of civilised nations, not only 

 from the fact that the great forces of nature have been 

 subordinated to the aims of man, and have supplied him 



