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Aug 30, 2016 · Two hundred and fifty years after his birth, Stephanie Millard celebrates the life of John Dalton who laid the foundations of modern atomic theory.
John Dalton (1766–1844) was a Manchester-based scientist whose pioneering work greatly advanced our understanding in multiple fields of research. His surviving apparatus and personal items are now in the Science Museum Group collection.
Besides the blue and purple of the spectrum he was able to recognize but one colour, yellow; or, as he states in his paper, "that part of the image which others call red appears to me little than a shade or defect of light; after that the orange, yellow, and green seem once colour, which descends pretty uniformity from an intense to a rare ...
- Overview
- Early life and education
- Early scientific career
John Dalton is best known for what became known as Dalton’s law, which posits that the total pressure of a gaseous mixture is equal to the sum of the partial pressures of the individual component gases, partial pressure being the pressure that each gas would exert alone within the volume of the mixture at the same temperature.
Why was John Dalton so influential?
John Dalton based his partial pressures theory on the idea that only like atoms repel one another, whereas unlike atoms appear to react indifferently. This notion was erroneous, but it helped to explain why each gas in a mixture behaved independently, serving the purpose of showing that atoms of all kinds are not alike.
What were John Dalton’s other contributions to chemistry?
John Dalton developed a crude method for measuring the masses of the elements in a compound. His law of multiple proportions states that when two elements form more than one compound, masses of one element that combine with a fixed mass of the other are in a ratio of small whole numbers.
What were John Dalton’s other scientific contributions beyond chemistry?
Dalton was born into a Quaker family of tradesmen; his grandfather Jonathan Dalton was a shoemaker, and his father, Joseph, was a weaver. Joseph married Deborah Greenup in 1755, herself from a prosperous local Quaker family. Dalton was the youngest of their three offspring who survived to adulthood. He attended John Fletcher’s Quaker grammar school in Eaglesfield. When John was only 12 years old, Fletcher turned the school over to John’s older brother, Jonathan, who called upon the younger Dalton to assist him with teaching. Two years later the brothers purchased a school in Kendal, where they taught approximately 60 students, some of them boarders.
As a teacher, Dalton drew upon the experiences of two important mentors: Elihu Robinson, a Quaker gentleman of some means and scientific tastes in Eaglesfield, and John Gough, a mathematical and classical scholar in Kendal. From these men John acquired the rudiments of mathematics, Greek, and Latin. Robinson and Gough were also amateur meteorologists in the Lake District, and from them Dalton gained practical knowledge in the construction and use of meteorologic instruments as well as instruction in keeping daily weather records. Dalton retained an avid interest in meteorologic measurement for the rest of his life.
In 1793 Dalton moved to Manchester to teach mathematics at a dissenting academy, the New College. He took with him the proof sheets of his first book, a collection of essays on meteorologic topics based on his own observations together with those of his friends John Gough and Peter Crosthwaite. This work, Meteorological Observations and Essays, was published in 1793. It created little stir at first but contained original ideas that, together with Dalton’s more developed articles, marked the transition of meteorology from a topic of general folklore to a serious scientific pursuit.
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Born and reared in England’s mountainous Lake District, Dalton was well placed to observe various meteorologic phenomena. He upheld the view, against contemporary opinion, that the atmosphere was a physical mixture of approximately 80 percent nitrogen and 20 percent oxygen rather than being a specific compound of elements. He measured the capacity of the air to absorb water vapour and the variation of its partial pressure with temperature. He defined partial pressure in terms of a physical law whereby every constituent in a mixture of gases exerted the same pressure it would have if it had been the only gas present. One of Dalton’s contemporaries, the British scientist John Frederic Daniell, later hailed him as the “father of meteorology.”
Soon after his arrival at Manchester, Dalton was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. His first contribution to this society was a description of the defect he had discovered in his own and his brother’s vision. This paper was the first publication on colour blindness, which for some time thereafter was known as Daltonism.
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- Sydney Ross
John Hudson, Chair of the RSC Historical Group, tells us about the life and work of John Dalton, and reports on his 250th anniversary celebrations held in Manchester earlier this year. 2016 marked the 250th anniversary of John Dalton’s birth. He was born into a Quaker family, probably on 6 September 1766, but curiously his name was not ...
Mar 19, 2021 · Dalton is widely commemorated in the field of science, including his blue plaque in Manchester and on The Moon – where the ‘Dalton’ lunar crater is named after him. Sketch portrait of the scientist John Dalton. John the Quaker. Dalton kept his simple Quaker ways, always wearing Quaker dress and using “plain language”.
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John Dalton. Born: Sept 6, 1844 in Eaglesfield, Cumberland, England. Died: Jul 27, 1844 (at age 77) in Manchester, England. Nationality: English. Famous For: Modern atomic theory.
