The Ascent of John Tyndall: Victorian Scientist, Mountaineer, and Public Intellectual

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, an