The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 7 - by Diarmid A Finnegan & Roland Jackson & Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund (Hardcover)

About the Book

The Ending of Tyndall's Relationship with the Drummond Family, Disputes about His Glaciology Work, and More

Book Synopsis

The 308 letters in this volume cover a critical period in Tyndall's personal and scientific lives. The volume begins with the difficult ending of his relationship with the Drummond family, disputes about his work in glaciology, and his early seminal work on the absorption of radiant heat by gases. It ends with the start of his championship of Julius Robert Mayer's work on the mechanical equivalent of heat. In between, Tyndall carefully establishes his own priority for his work on radiant heat, and he accepts the position of professor of physics at the Government School of Mines. The lure of the Alps also becomes ever stronger. In this period comes perhaps Tyndall's greatest mountaineering achievement, the first ascent of the Weisshorn, and a remarkable winter visit to Chamonix and the Mer de Glace. As his reputation grows, Tyndall continues to make his way in society. He is elected to the elite Athenaeum Club on January 31, 1860.

About the Author

Diarmid A. Finnegan (Editor)
Diarmid A. Finnegan is senior lecturer in human geography at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland and coeditor of Spaces of Global Knowledge: Exhibition, Encounter and Exchange in an Age of Empire and The Correspondence of John Tyndall, volume 7. His current research centers on the history of science and religion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Roland Jackson (Editor)
Roland Jackson works on the policy, history, and ethics of science and technology. He was previously head of the Science Museum, London, and chief executive of the British Science Association.

Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund (Editor)
Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund is a postdoctoral research associate in the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, working as part of the Arctic Cultures project. Her research centers on the intersection of Arctic exploration, print culture, science, religion, and medicine in the modern period with a focus on the British and Danish imperial worlds. Kaalund is also a postdoctoral associate at Darwin College.