ISBN:  Unavailable

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Page count: 348

"'John Dalton was a very singular man. A Quaker by profession and practice, he had none of the manners or ways of the world. A tolerable mathematician, he gained his livelihood, I believe, by teaching mathematics to young people ... ; he followed with ardour analogies and inductions. ... I have no doubt that he was one of the most original philosophers of his times, and one of the most ingenious.' Thus did the great scientist, Sir Humphrey Davy, describe the man often called 'the father of the atomic theory.' The details of that theory have long since been refined, but the revolution that Dalton effected in physical science is as significant as that instigated by Darwin's ideas on evolution. Dalton lived and taught in Manchester from 1793 to his death in 1844, and his life paralleled that of the emerging Industrial Revolution. The author places the methodical existence of this provincial genius against the hectic and innovative scene that was nineteenth-century England. She describes how this self-educated schoolmaster conducted imaginative investigations in meteorology, chemistry, and natural history, and evolved a notion of matter that has given our own age a character both terrifying and exciting."--Jacket.