John Tyndall: The "Xcentric" Irish Scientist
Ava Dowdall, RDS Library & Archives Volunteer, sheds light on the life and letters of the Irish scientist John Tyndall.
As a history student, it can be difficult to figure out a career path related to history, and it can take some time to figure out what opportunities are available to you. Throughout October and November, I have been volunteering at the RDS Library & Archives one day a week. This volunteering has been a fantastic chance to learn about the kind of work an archivist does, how archives are kept, and the digital work that’s become increasingly common in archives throughout the world. Through my time working I have familiarised myself with Omeka, a platform that many digitised materials within archives are hosted on. I’ve spent my time organising a collection, transcribing letters, and describing various pieces that have been digitised from the Library & Archives on the platform. It has been a fantastic learning experience to see how archives operate, and consider a potential pathway for my future.
Much of the work that I did while volunteering was connected to the RDS’s letter collection. Much of these letters are correspondence between academics, particularly scientists, working in the nineteenth century. One such scientist is John Tyndall, who primarily worked in physics and engineering. The John Tyndall Collection in the RDS Library & Archives (linked here: John Tyndall Letters · RDS Digital Archive) contains 41 letters written by Tyndall, the majority of which are to Dr. William Francis, a British chemist with connections to scientific publications. Tyndall had undertaken some translation work for Francis while researching diamagnetism in Queenwood College in Hampshire, England. The collection of letters in the RDS Library & Archives would be of great use to historians of scientific ideas, giving an insight into some of the scientific discussions of the period, and Irish contributions to them, as well as providing insight to any historians of education, given Tyndall’s involvement in setting up the first programme of practical science and engineering within Ireland and Great Britain alongside Edward Frankland.
Tyndall himself is a key figure in the development of science education in Great Britain and Ireland, having also become the first government examiner in physics, and appointed later as the first chief examiner of military examinations for the Royal Engineers and Royal Artillery. Throughout his educational career Tyndall worked closely with Frankland, with the two moving to Marburg university together, where Tyndall wrote his PhD thesis in 1849 and studied chemistry under Robert Bunsen. Throughout his time in Germany, Tyndall solidified a strong connection to the German scientific community, which was cemented by his translation work for Dr. William Francis that appeared in the Royal Dublin Society’s Philosophical Magazine, which features in many of the letters in the Library & Archives collection.
Tyndall was also a vocal defender of Charles Darwin’s On the origin of species, which was published in 1859. Tyndall had been elected the chair of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain six years prior, and alongside Frankland, organised the ‘X-Club’ to defend the ‘great hypothesis’. Each member had an epithet, with Tyndall’s being ‘Xcentric’. Tyndall’s role within the group was to provide atmospheric physics in order to support Darwin’s hypothesis. His defence of evolution was so strong, he ultimately formally broke from religion, and aided in the formation of humanism and the setting up of the evolutionist journal Nature. Giving many lectures and publishing textbooks, Tyndall became a key scientific figure of the mid to late nineteenth century. Tyndall had contributed many other important scientific contributions, with his research resulting in advancements in meteorology, invention, and disease and infection.
Within the RDS collection, you will also find some of Tyndall’s published works and lectures from throughout his scientific career. These books include: Heat: A Mode of Motion; Diamagnetism and Magne-Crystallic Action; Glaciers of the Alps; Floating Matter of the Air; The Forms of Water; and multiple copies of Fragments of Science and New Fragments which contain Tyndall’s work. The donation of these works was accepted by the RDS Library & Archives Committee from former RDS Science Officer Charles Mollan in 2020 and is of national and international significance, containing approximately 150 works by John Tyndall. Researchers can make an appointment to read these books within the RDS Library.
The letters from Tyndall in the RDS collection are mostly written in the early 1850s, relatively early in Tyndall’s career. Nevertheless, they provide a fascinating insight into the mind of a man who had a great deal of passion for the sciences, and eager to advance the field as he would do throughout his career.