Why the grumpy Atom Man still matters
Ungainly, stiff and uncouth, John Dalton from Eaglesfield in Cumbria discovered truths that appear on page one of every chemistry textbook.
If you had met the famous scientist John Dalton at some grand and learned gathering in about 1830 you probably wouldn’t have liked him.
He would have seemed an alarmingly unattractive and uncouth figure, his voice harsh and brawling; his gait stiff and awkward.
If you had asked him about his amazing discoveries he would have cut you short with the reply: “I have written a book on that subject, and if thou wishest to inform thyself about the matter, thou canst buy my book for 3s. 6d.”
Yet if you knew him better you might find he was gentle and humane. Unlike most scientists, he had a high respect for female intelligence.
He loved nature, lived simply, enjoyed unpretentious music and in his youth wrote embarrassingly bad poetry. This is the paradoxical John Dalton, Fellow of the Royal Society, the discoverer of the modern theory that everything is made of atoms, a truth so fundamental it appears on page one of every chemistry text book.
He is also celebrated as the “father of meteorology” and for his research into colour blindness.
Many shook their heads at the laborious way John Dalton formed his ideas. They tutted at his crude experimental methods and bristled at his refusal to learn from other people’s conclusions.
They sighed at the tenacity with which he stuck to his own findings. They didn’t reckon with his extraordinary ability to guess the right answer from defective data. There are clues to all this stubbornness and originality in his upbringing.
If you travel about two and a half miles south west of Cockermouth you will come across a rough-looking whitewashed cottage in the tiny village of Eagesfield.
There, on 6 September 1766 John was born. His father Joseph was a poor, slightly lethargic weaver but his wife Deborah was a woman of strong character. Though he grew up in comparatively humble circumstances, the young Dalton always displayed a philosophical dignity.
While attending a Quaker school he started, at the age of ten, to work for Elihu Robinson, a wealthy Quaker amateur scientist who quickly noticed the boy’s love of learning. He gave little John mathematics lessons which went so well Dalton eventually set up his own school in a barn at Eaglesfield.
In 1781 he travelled sixty miles south to join his brother Jonathan as assistant in a school at Kendal, which they came to own. Dalton probably read more in the twelve years he spent there than in the remaining fifty years of his life.
He became friends with John Gough, the blind philosopher Wordsworth wrote about in his poem The Excursion and learned to keep a meteorological journal, making 200,000 observations in 57 years that led later to discoveries.
Shortly after landing a professorship at New College, Manchester in 1793 he announced his discovery that water vapour exists as a separate entity in the atmosphere. Joining the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society he gave the first detailed description of the peculiarity now known as colour-blindness.
His next series of four essays outlining his theory of gases gave him a European-wide reputation.
Working intensely on gases convinced him they must be made of indivisible atoms and that, in turn, elements must be unique combinations of atoms. This led to the ground-breaking discovery of modern atomic theory.
It made him world famous. Although later chemists revised these principles (atoms can be split and elements can be built different ways) Dalton had laid the foundation for modern chemistry. He had given manufacturers a reliable “recipe” for making compounds.
Attached to his own routine, the monotony of his toil led to a certain stagnation. He read little at this point in his life and he discouraged others from doing so. “I could carry all the books I have ever read on my back,” he used to say. Narrowness and rigidity of mind were the result.
What he had not himself discovered was to him almost non-existent. New College moved its premises north to York in 1799 and Dalton did not follow. Instead, he supported himself by giving private maths lessons and doing professional chemistry for tiny fees.
He was forced to live frugally but he still gave lavishly to relatives. His kindliness and love of truth are exemplified in the following anecdote: “A student who had missed one lecture of a course applied to him for a certificate of full attendance. Dalton refused; but after moment replied, ‘If thou wilt come to-morrow, I will go over the lecture thou hast missed.”’
However, the value of the atomic theory to industry began to pay off. Honours poured in, including a degree from Oxford and a Civil List pension from the Queen. He became President of the Manchester Lit and Phil, which gave him a laboratory for life. Despite his growing affluence and influence, his frugality persisted. When he died his fellow townsmen gave him the equivalent of a State funeral.
Here is a short summary of some of the reasons John Dalton’s discoveries still matter:
Meteorology: Over 57 years, Dalton recorded 200,000 observations, discovering the theory of atmospheric circulation that air rises at the equator and falls at the poles.
Measuring mountains: Keen fell-walker, Dalton used a barometer to fix the height of mountains. Before the Ordnance Survey he was the only source of such information.
Colour blindness: Dalton was the first to propose the concept of colour blindness (he could only see blue, purple and yellow).
Gas Laws: His law of Partial Pressures saved divers, and later spacemen, from the deadly “bends”.
Atomic Theory: Realising some gases were less soluble than others, he discovered this was because each one comprised different numbers of particles.
Atomic weights: Discovering oxygen was eight times as heavy as hydrogen, he calculated the first Table of Atomic Weights and was able to predict the existence of many, yet undiscovered, elements. This brilliant insight revolutionised science.
Other investigations: he published brilliant papers on diverse topics such as rain and dew and the origin of springs; on heat, the colour of the sky, steam, and the reflection and refraction of light; even on English grammar.
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This is a short extract from our book Secrets of the Crooked River, which is a kind of historical biography of the Northern Lakes and Cumbria, centred around the lovely town of Cockermouth.
You can pick up a copy, and of our latest book Secrets of the Lost Kingdom, from the New Bookshop on Main Street, Cockermouth. It is also available at the Moon and Sixpence, Lakeside, Keswick. You can get it at Bookends in Keswick and Carlisle, along with Sam Read in Grasmere.
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