If Henry Cavendish had all the advantages of rank, fortune
and privilege, the same cannot be said of one of his near contemporaries, John
Dalton. He was born at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth in Cumberland (now
Cumbria), the English Lake District, in 1766. His parents were members of the
Society of Friends (the Quakers); his father, Joseph, was an impoverished
woollen weaver, described as ‘feckless’, who inherited a small farm from his
father, and his mother, Deborah, (neé Greenup) came from a family of respectable
yeomen.
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| John Dalton |
John was the youngest of the three surviving six children born to
Joseph and Deborah, and began his education at a local school, where his
passion for learning attracted the attention of Mr Elihu Robinson, a Quaker
gentleman, who took young John under his wing and provided him with extra
tuition, particularly in mathematics. John could only attend in winter, as in
the summers he had to work on his father’s farm. When the schoolmaster, Mr
Fletcher, retired in 1788, his place was taken by John, at the astonishing age
of twelve. He had discipline problems with the older boys, many of whom were
his own age, and who frequently wanted to fight with him in the adjoining
graveyard. He received about five shillings a week in penny fees, and supplemented
his income by selling stationery, but the school was closed after two years and
John began working in the fields.
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| Card advertising Daltons' school, Keswick |
In 1781, he moved to Keswick, where he joined
his brother Jonathan, teaching in a school that they took over when the master
(and their cousin) George Bewley retired. Their sister, Mary, acted as
housekeeper, and over sixty pupils, both day pupils and boarders, attended,
earning a profit of one hundred guineas in the first year. Their parents would
frequently visit, bringing home-grown produce, walking the forty-four miles
from Eaglesfield to Keswick in a single day. John met John Gough, the blind
polymath, at Kendal and received instruction in Greek, Latin and French,
together with more advanced mathematics from him. Gough also encouraged him to
keep a meteorological journal, which he did for 57 years, making over 200,000
entries. At Gough’s recommendation, John took the position of Professor of
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at New College, Manchester, in 1793, and the
following year he became a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of
Manchester. In October 1794, he presented a paper to the society, Extraordinary
Facts relating to the Vision of Colours, in which he described
colour-blindness, discovered in his brother and himself whilst undertaking
botanical studies, which still carries the alternative name Daltonism.
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| Dalton with a Rain Gauge |
John had
bought his mother some silk stockings as a birthday present, thinking them to
be dark-bluish drab, when in fact the devout Quaker lady was presented with a pair
of bright scarlet stockings, to which she responded
“Thou hast bought me a pair of grand hose, John, but what made thee fancy such a bright colour? Why, I can never show myself at meeting in them.”
He returned to his observations
of flowers and found his descriptions of them to be false.
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| Test for colour-blindness (you should see 74) |
His salary at the
College was £80 per year, from which £27 10s were deducted for rent and
commons, but Dalton lived frugally on the remainder. All the tutors were
Dissenters and the College admitted those students who were barred from the
universities on religious grounds. Not unlike a modern lecturer, Dalton had
twenty-one hours contact time with his students, and after his lecture
preparation time, he had leisure to spend in the small college library and the
large public library of Manchester. He spent six years in the post before
leaving and taking the position of the Secretary of the Literary and
Philosophical Society, becoming Vice-President in 1808 and President in 1817.
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| Dalton's Notebook |
As a Quaker, Dalton had few vices but he enjoyed a game of bowls on a Thursday
afternoon at the Dog and Partridge inn, where he played in the team, drank his
tea and smoked his churchwarden pipe – he said that he liked to take his
Saturday half-holiday in the middle of the week. He was of moderate height and
as one would expect of a ex-Cumbrian farmhand, physically strong; he dressed
formally, in the typical Quaker garb, in good quality matching clothes, very
neat and tidy. He retained his broad Cumbrian accent, was quite gruff although
well-mannered, and enjoyed socialising with friends and the Johns family, with
whom he lodged. He rose at eight and after a light breakfast went to his
laboratory, took lunch at one then back to work until tea at five, and supper
at nine, after which he would come out of the laboratory, smoke a pipe with Rev. Johns and talk about the day.
He took his holidays back home in the Lakes,
where he enjoyed hill walking on the Fells, climbing the mountains and the ‘right
gude crack’ with old friends. Although he ‘never found the time’ to marry,
he appreciated the company of the ladies but never entered into a romantic
relationship, dedicating himself instead to science. His great legacy is his
atomic theory, which developed from his enquiries into the nature of gases. It
deserves a post of its own.
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| Dalton's Atomic Symbols |
Monsieur Pelletan of Paris came to Manchester in
1820 with the express purpose of meeting le philosophe, expecting to
find him in his professor’s chair surrounded by adoring adepts. After much
difficulty, he eventually found the distinguished Dalton helping a young boy to
write numbers on a slate. Greatly surprised, Pelletan inquired if he was,
indeed, speaking to Monsieur Dalton the physicist. “Yes,” came the
reply, “wilt thou sit down till I put this lad right about his arithmetic.”
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| Bust of John Dalton |
Another story is that he was called to the Royal Court, to meet George VI. As a
Quaker, Dalton would not wear court dress but a compromise was found, wherein
he could wear the scarlet academic gown of a Doctor of Law from Oxford.
Noticing the odd garb, the King asked who it was, to be told it was Dr Dalton,
the Manchester philosopher. He went over to him and said,
“Well, Dr. Dalton, how are you getting on in Manchester – all quiet, I suppose?”“Well, I don't know," replied Dalton to the King, "just middlin', I think.”
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| John Dalton and autograph |
He would
not suffer fools, however, and when pressed about a particular issue by a
troublesome inquirer, he responded with,
“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.”
In 1822,
he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1833 he was granted a
government pension of £150 per year, raised in 1836 to £300. In later life, his
health declined and in July 1844, after a series of strokes, he died at
Manchester, aged 77.
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| John Dalton |
His body was laid in state in a darkened room in
Manchester Town Hall, where 40,000 people came to pay their respects, and a
procession of over a hundred carriages attended his funeral. Policemen wore
tokens of mourning and the shops and warehouses along the route were closed in
respect, as hundreds of people walked to Ardwick cemetery, where his remains
were laid to rest beneath a red granite memorial. There is a John Dalton Street
in Manchester city centre, university buildings in the city’s universities are
named after him, as is a crater on the moon.
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| Dalton collecting Marsh Gas - mural in Manchester Town Hall by Ford Madox Brown |
Much of Dalton’s original work was
destroyed by a German bomb, during an air raid on Manchester on Christmas Eve
1940.
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