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John Tyndall's Birth
John Tyndall was born in Leighlinbridge, Ireland where he was raised in a Protestant family and "claimed descent from the first translator of the English Bible." Westminster gazette (London, England :. ). The Life and Work of John Tyndall : with Personal Reminiscences by Friends, and Numerous Illustrations. 1893. -
Work on Diamagnetism
While the concept of diamagnetism was discovered in 1778 by Dutch Physicist Anton Brugmans, Tyndall was able to prove the law of magnetic attraction and repulsion held true for diamagnetism. He accomplished this via very precise measurements of bismuth in a torsion balance. The Royal Institution. “John Tyndall: The Physicist Who Proved the Greenhouse Effect - with Paul Hurley” YouTube, 20 Nov. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1thc8JDgfXo&t=2801s&ab_channel=TheRoyalInstitution. -
Absorption of Radiant Heat by Gases and Vapors
While experimenting is what he called "a perfectly unexplored field of inquiry", Tyndall discovered that carbonic gas absorbed more heat energy than air, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. This led to the generation of what we now know as the greenhouse effect and global warming. Tyndall, John. "Contributions to Molecular Physics in the Domain of Radiant Heat". London, 1870. -
Measuring Carbon Dioxide
After discovering the greenhouse gas effect with his studies on gas and vapor, Tyndall created a device to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in human breath. This is still in use today in the monitoring of patients under anesthesia. Jaffe, Michael B. PhD Infrared Measurement of Carbon Dioxide in the Human Breath: “Breathe-Through” Devices from Tyndall to the Present Day, Anesthesia & Analgesia: September 2008 - Volume 107 - Issue 3 - p 890-904
doi: 10.1213/ane.0b013e31817ee3b3 -
Proving the Movement Method of Glaciers
Tyndall was an accomplished mountaineer and summited numerous mountains in the Alpes, many for the first time ever recorded. While in the Alpes, he studied glaciers and with the help of ideas from Michael Faraday used fracture and regelation to explain glacial movement. Regelation being the melting of ice by pressure and subsequent refreezing of that ice when pressure is released. Tyndall, John. "Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion". New York, 1869.
