Gents Mag 1844 part 2 p.548
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list, 2nd qtr 19th century | ||
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Gentleman's Magazine 1844 part 2 p.548
Obituary JOHN DALTON, D.C.L. F.R.S. We are now enabled to append to the brief particulars of this distinguished philosopher, given in our last Magazine, p.431, the following more connected account, delivered by the Very Rev. the Dean of Ely, in his address as President of the recent meeting of the British Association at York: "Dr. Dalton was one of that vigourous race of Cumberland yeomen amongst whom are sometimes found the most simple and primitive habits and manners combined with no inconsiderable literary or scientific attainments. From teaching a school as a boy in his native village of Eaglesfield near Cockermouth, we find him at a subsequent period similarly engaged at Kendal, where he had the society and assistance of Gough the blind philosopher and a man of very remarkable powers, and of other persons of congenial tastes with his own. In 1793, when in his 23rd year, he became Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in the New College in Mosley Street, Manchester, a situation which he continued to hold for a period of six years, and until the establishment was removed to this city (York), when he became a private teacher of the same subjects, occupying for the purposes of study and instruction the lower rooms of the Literary and Philosophical Society in George Street, rarely quitting the scene of his tranquil and unambitious labours, beyond an annual visit to his native mountains, with a joint view to health and meteorological observations. He made his first appearance as an author in a volume of 'Meteorological Observations and Essays,' which he published in 1793, and which contains the germ of many of his subsequent speculations and discoveries; and his first views of the Atomic Theory, which must for ever render his name memorable as one of the great founders of chemical philosophy, were suggested to him during his examination of the olefiant gas and carburetted hydrogen gas. His theory was noticed in lectures which he delivered at Manchester in 1803 and 1804, and much more explicitly in lectures delivered at Edinburgh and Glasgow; it was, however, first made generally known to the world in Dr. Thompson's Chemistry in 1807, and was briefly noticed in his own System of Chemistry which appeared in the following year; and though his claims to this great generalization were subject to some disputes both at home and abroad, yet in a very short time both the doctrine and its author were acknowledged and recognized by Wollaston, Davy, Berzelius, and all the great chemists of Europe. "But the atomic theory is not the only great contribution to chemical science which we owe to Dalton; he discovered contemporaneously with Gay-Lussac, with whom many of his researches run parallel, the important general law of the expansion of gases - that for equal increments of temperature, all gases expand by the same portion of their bulk, being about three-eighths in proceeding from the temperatures of freezing and boiling water. His contributions to meteorology were also of the most important kind. "Dr. Dalton was not a man of what are commonly called brilliant talents, but of a singularly clear understanding and plain practical good sense; his approaches to the formation of his theories were slow and deliberate, where every step of his induction was made the object of long-continued and persevering thought; but his convictions were based upon the true principles of inductive philosophy, and when once formed, were boldly advanced and steadily maintained. It is always unsafe, and perhaps unwise, to speculate upon the amount of good fortune which is connected with the time and circumstances of any great discovery, with some view to detract from the credit of its author; and it has been contended that Wollaston, Berzelius, and others, were already in the track which would naturally lead to this great generalization; but it has been frequently and justly remarked, that, if philosophy be a lottery, those only who play well are ever observed to draw its prizes. "Though Dalton's great discovery,' says the historian of the Inductive Sciences, was 'soon generally employed, and universally spoken of with admiration, it did not bring to him anything but barren praise, and he continued in his humble employment when his fame had filled Europe, and his name become a household word in the laboratory. After some years he was appointed a Corresponding Member of the Institue of France, which may be considered as a European recognition of the importance of what he had done; and in 1826, two medals for the encouragement of science having been placed at the disposal of the Royal Society by the King, one of them was assigned to Dalton, 'for his development of the atomic theory.' In 1833, at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was held at Cambridge, it was announced |
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