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 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 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 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 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 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...