Roland JacksonOct 25, 20218 minDid Eunice Foote discover the 'greenhouse effect'?The story of the American Eunice Foote and the discovery of the greenhouse effect has become a contested issue in the history of climate...
Roland JacksonAug 26, 20204 minEunice Foote and the dawn of climate scienceThe American Eunice Foote is finally getting the recognition she deserves. In 1856 she showed, using sunlight, that gases including...
Roland JacksonDec 22, 20199 minThe saga of Eunice Foote and John TyndallWho knew what about Eunice Foote’s 1856 discovery of the absorption of heat by carbon dioxide and water vapour? UPDATE 13 February 2019:...
Roland JacksonMay 17, 20194 minWho discovered the greenhouse effect?160 years ago, on 18 May 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall wrote in his journal ‘the subject is completely in my hands’. This is no...
Roland JacksonDec 17, 20182 minElton HallElton Hall, home of the Proby family since 1660, lies in the Cambridgeshire countryside about 8 miles from Peterborough. It is regularly...
Roland JacksonSep 12, 20182 minJohn Tyndall and John RuskinJohn Tyndall (c. 1822-1893) and John Ruskin (1819-1900), of similar ages, were both good friends and admirers of the older Thomas...
Roland JacksonJul 5, 20183 minMystery of the missing Marburg journalsJust occasionally, there is a moment in an archive when the gasps are audible. Such was the case on 16 January 2017, when Charlotte New,...
Roland JacksonJul 4, 20182 minJohn Tyndall and Robert BunsenJohn Tyndall is known as a physicist rather than a chemist, but he had a greater regard for no German man than Robert Bunsen. In October...
Roland JacksonJul 3, 20182 minThe remains of Queenwood CollegeQueenwood College no longer exists. It was built in 1842, as Harmony Hall, for a project in community living of the socialist visionary...
Roland JacksonJul 2, 20184 minJohn Tyndall and the Lake DistrictJohn Tyndall spent every summer but one in the Alps between 1856 and his death in 1893. Mountains held a lure he could not resist. But...
Roland JacksonJul 1, 20183 minOn the Eiger“Victor”, I yelled, “take the rope in really tight. I can’t get past this overhang”. My cramponed feet scrabbled back onto the rock....
Roland JacksonApr 16, 20183 minIn search of a graveJohann Josef Benet (1824–64), who John Tyndall called ‘Bennen’, was Tyndall’s favourite Alpine guide. Edward Whymper, the first...
Roland JacksonMar 21, 20183 minConstructing a biographyRoland Jackson writes about how The Ascent of John Tyndall was conceived
Roland JacksonMar 8, 20182 minSerendipitous discovery of a novelJuliet Pollock has become one of my favourite women. John Tyndall admired her enormously, and wrote dozens of letters to her. He sent her...
Roland JacksonFeb 11, 20183 minOn the MatterhornSurely no-one can look up at the Matterhorn from Zermatt, an iconic image blazoned across Swiss advertising, without wanting to stand on...
Roland JacksonJan 22, 20185 minPaley's WorksIn the early nineteenth century, no-one who had not studied the works of William Paley could consider themselves to have had a proper...
Roland JacksonJan 7, 20182 minOn Alp LusgenJohn Tyndall visited the Alps at a time when their peaks were being climbed for the first time, and Victorian tourists were enticed to...
Roland JacksonJan 5, 20185 minJohn Tyndall and the atmosphere: part 2A dispute over water vapour John Tyndall (c.1822–1893), Irish physicist, mountaineer, and public intellectual, is best known in...
Roland JacksonDec 31, 20172 minJohn Tyndall and the atmosphere: part 1‘...those demoralised and brutalised sirens...’ In my forthcoming biography of John Tyndall, the atmosphere plays a major role. A foghorn...
Roland JacksonDec 18, 20172 minBy the banks of the River BarrowFor the biographer, nothing can beat a physical visit to places significant to the subject. Even if much of the environment may have...