Tyndall, John (1820-1893)

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0117 MS 767
Held at	: Royal Society   Click here to find out how to view this collection at https://royalsociety.org/collections/ ›
Full title	: Tyndall, John (1820-1893)
Date(s)	: 19th Century
Level of description	: Sub-fonds
Extent	: 17 pages
Name of creator(s)	: Tyndall | John | 1820-1893 | natural philosopher
Detailed catalogue	: Click here to view repository detailed catalogue

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

Born, 1820; Education: PhD; Career: Taught at Queenwood College, Hampshire (to 1853); in 1859, his labortory experiments showed that water vapour and carbon dioxide absorb infra-red radiation and that they could therefore affect the climate of the Earth. As soon as his paper was published in 1861 in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Society', he put out a press release for the London newspapaers explaining that this result implied that all past climate changes were now understood and all future climate changes could be predicted simply from a knowledge of the concentrations of these 'greenhouse' gases. Tyndall restricted himself to describing his experiments and simply linking it to work of Fourier a few decades earlier. It took more than a century before the credible quantitative estimates of these effects and their influence on past and possibly future climates were made, along with good enough observations of the gases to know that they have (and continue) to change significantly. Fellow of the Royal Society, 1852; Rumford Medal, 1864; Vice President of the Royal Society, 1879-1880; died, 1893.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Notebook of John Tyndall 'Number II, Thermometer observations als Lusgen 7 October to 15 October'. No year.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English

System of arrangement:

Conditions governing access:

Open

Conditions governing reproduction:

No publication without written permission. Apply to Archivist in the first instance.

Finding aids:

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

Allied Materials

Related material:

Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Copied from the Royal Society catalogue by Sarah Drewery.

Rules or conventions:
General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal Place and Corporate Names 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions:
Feb 2009.