Faraday As A Discoverer - Softcover

Tyndall, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1438536054 ISBN 13: 9781438536057

Publisher: Book Jungle, 2010

Synopsis

Michael Faraday was a 19th Chemist and physicist. He worked in the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. John Tyndall was an Irish physicist, whose initial scientific fame came from his study of diamagnetism, which led to his appointment as successor to Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution in 1862.

About this title

Book Description:

Published in 1868, soon after the death of Michael Faraday (1791–1867), this short but well-informed work by the physicist John Tyndall (1820–93) assesses his career and character as a scientific investigator. Biographical detail is used to illuminate his achievements as one of the nineteenth century's foremost enquiring minds.

About the Author:

John Tyndall (1820 – 1893) was a prominent 19th-century Irish physicist. His initial scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he made discoveries in the realms of infrared radiation and the physical properties of air. Tyndall also published more than a dozen science books which brought state-of-the-art 19th century experimental physics to a wide audience. From 1853 to 1887 he was professor of physics at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. Tyndall was born in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland. His father was a local police constable, descended from Gloucestershire emigrants who settled in southeast Ireland around 1670. Tyndall attended the local schools in County Carlow until his late teens, and was probably an assistant teacher near the end of his time there. Subjects learned at school notably included technical drawing and mathematics with some applications of those subjects to land surveying. He was hired as a draftsman by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in his late teens in 1839, and moved to work for the Ordnance Survey for Great Britain in 1842. In the decade of the 1840s, a railroad-building boom was in progress, and Tyndall's land surveying experience was valuable and in demand by the railway companies. Between 1844 and 1847, he was lucratively employed in railway construction planning. In 1847 Tyndall opted to become a mathematics and surveying teacher at a boarding school (Queenwood College) in Hampshire. Recalling this decision later, he wrote: "the desire to grow intellectually did not forsake me; and, when railway work slackened, I accepted in 1847 a post as master in Queenwood College." Another recently arrived young teacher at Queenwood was Edward Frankland, who had previously worked as a chemical laboratory assistant for the British Geological Survey. Frankland and Tyndall became good friends. On the strength of Frankland's prior knowledge, they decided to go to Germany to further their education in science. Among other things, Frankland knew that certain German universities were ahead of any in Britain in expe-rimental chemistry and physics. (British universities were still focused on classics and mathematics and not laboratory science.) The pair moved to Germany in summer 1848 and enrolled at the University of Marburg, where Robert Bunsen was an influential teacher. Tyndall studied under Bunsen for two years.

About this edition

• Publisher: Book Jungle
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1438536054
• ISBN 13: 9781438536057
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 118