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: my paper giving a mo...
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 cryptic note. Just n...
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 open to the public t...
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, the Curator of Colle...
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 poems too. He was m...
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 education. William Pale...
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 scientific circles for his wo...
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 on the English coas...