New Fragments

Published in 1893, Tyndall's engaging potpourri of essays features religious philosophy, scientific discoveries, biographies, personal recollections and Alpine mountaineering.

John Tyndall (Author)

9781108038447, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 November 2011

512 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.9 cm, 0.65 kg

Born in Leighlinbridge in Ireland, John Tyndall (1820–93) was a brilliant nineteenth-century experimental physicist and gifted science educator. He worked initially as a draughtsman, then spent a year teaching at an English school before attending the University of Marburg to study physics and chemistry. Tyndall carried out important research on magnetism, light and bacteriology. Among his many significant achievements, he demonstrated the greenhouse effect in Earth's atmospheric gases using absorption spectroscopy. He was a skilled and entertaining educator and as Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution he gave many public lectures and demonstrations of science. In this engaging potpourri of essays published in 1893, Tyndall's prose enlivens subjects as diverse as the life of Louis Pasteur, observing the Sabbath, the prevention of phthisis (tuberculosis), personal experiences of Alpine mountaineering, and the science of rainbows.

1. The Sabbath
2. Goethe's 'Farbenlehre'
3. Atoms, molecules, and ether waves
4. Count Rumford
5. Louis Pasteur, his life and labours
6. The rainbow and its congeners
7. Address delivered at the Birbeck Institution on October 22, 1884
8. Thomas Young
9. Life in the Alps
10. About common water
11. Personal recollections of Thomas Carlyle
12. On unveiling the statue of Thomas Carlyle
13. On the origin, propagation, and prevention of phthisis
14. Old Alpine jottings
15. A morning on Alp Lusgen.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX]