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Did 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 Jackson
Oct 25, 20218 min read
302 views
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Eunice Foote and the dawn of climate science
The American Eunice Foote is finally getting the recognition she deserves. In 1856 she showed, using sunlight, that gases including...
Roland Jackson
Aug 26, 20204 min read
187 views
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The saga of Eunice Foote and John Tyndall
Who knew what about Eunice Foote’s 1856 discovery of the absorption of heat by carbon dioxide and water vapour? UPDATE 13 February 2019:...
Roland Jackson
Dec 22, 20199 min read
1,146 views


Who 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 Jackson
May 17, 20194 min read
215 views
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Elton Hall
Elton Hall, home of the Proby family since 1660, lies in the Cambridgeshire countryside about 8 miles from Peterborough. It is regularly...
Roland Jackson
Dec 17, 20182 min read
186 views


John Tyndall and John Ruskin
John Tyndall (c. 1822-1893) and John Ruskin (1819-1900), of similar ages, were both good friends and admirers of the older Thomas...
Roland Jackson
Sep 12, 20182 min read
323 views


Mystery of the missing Marburg journals
Just 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 Jackson
Jul 5, 20183 min read
43 views


John Tyndall and Robert Bunsen
John 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 Jackson
Jul 4, 20182 min read
50 views


The remains of Queenwood College
Queenwood College no longer exists. It was built in 1842, as Harmony Hall, for a project in community living of the socialist visionary...
Roland Jackson
Jul 3, 20182 min read
120 views


John Tyndall and the Lake District
John 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 Jackson
Jul 2, 20184 min read
44 views


On 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 Jackson
Jul 1, 20183 min read
28 views


In search of a grave
Johann Josef Benet (1824–64), who John Tyndall called ‘Bennen’, was Tyndall’s favourite Alpine guide. Edward Whymper, the first...
Roland Jackson
Apr 16, 20183 min read
98 views


Constructing a biography
Roland Jackson writes about how The Ascent of John Tyndall was conceived
Roland Jackson
Mar 21, 20183 min read
143 views


Serendipitous discovery of a novel
Juliet Pollock has become one of my favourite women. John Tyndall admired her enormously, and wrote dozens of letters to her. He sent her...
Roland Jackson
Mar 8, 20182 min read
56 views


On the Matterhorn
Surely no-one can look up at the Matterhorn from Zermatt, an iconic image blazoned across Swiss advertising, without wanting to stand on...
Roland Jackson
Feb 11, 20183 min read
179 views


Paley's Works
In the early nineteenth century, no-one who had not studied the works of William Paley could consider themselves to have had a proper...
Roland Jackson
Jan 22, 20185 min read
124 views


On Alp Lusgen
John Tyndall visited the Alps at a time when their peaks were being climbed for the first time, and Victorian tourists were enticed to...
Roland Jackson
Jan 7, 20182 min read
122 views


John Tyndall and the atmosphere: part 2
A dispute over water vapour John Tyndall (c.1822–1893), Irish physicist, mountaineer, and public intellectual, is best known in...
Roland Jackson
Jan 5, 20185 min read
142 views


John 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 Jackson
Dec 31, 20172 min read
155 views


By the banks of the River Barrow
For the biographer, nothing can beat a physical visit to places significant to the subject. Even if much of the environment may have...
Roland Jackson
Dec 18, 20172 min read
87 views
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