John Tyndall: From Peak to Trough

The scientist and natural philosopher John Tyndall was known to the public through his lectures and newspaper debates. But, say Miguel DeArce and Norman MacMillan, one of Tyndall’s most famous public speeches, his Belfast Address of 1874, plagiarised the thinking of others.

Miguel DeArce | Published in History Today Volume 63 Issue 7 July 2013

Herbert Spencer as a dog statue about to be muzzled. The caption to this Puck cover of 1883 reads: 'The Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature proposes to get up cases against Professors Huxley and Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, and others who, by their writings have sown widespread unbelief, and in some cases rank atheism' John Tyndall (1820-93) is celebrated today as the Victorian physicist who discovered the greenhouse effect. While studying the effects of solar radiation passing through the atmosphere at high altitudes, he examined the effects of water vapour and carbon dioxide in preventing heat from dissipating.

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