The Correspondence, November 1856-february 1859

This sixth volume of Tyndall's correspondence contains 302 letters covering a period of twenty-eight months (1856-1859). It begins shortly after Tyndall returned from his first glacier research in the Alps and follows him as he experimented and lectured on physics in central London at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (RI), visited friends, joined London’s fashionable social circles, published and reviewed scientific articles, corresponded with fellow men of science on a wide range of topics, and developed his theories about the structure and movement of glaciers. Importantly, this volume includes Tyndall’s expeditions to the Alps and also documents some of his most dangerous mountaineering exploits.

Ken Corbett is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. He completed a Master of Arts in History at Dalhousie University and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Philosophy at Brock University. Ken’s research and teaching focus on the history of science and technology, nineteenth-century Britain and empire, and nineteenth-century Europe. Ken’s dissertation examines the history of punctuality and timekeeping in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain.

Norman McMillan is Emeritus Senior Lecturer and Head of the? Research Institute of Technology at Carlow, and is presently Managing Director of Advanced Nano Technologies Ltd, Dublin,? which commercializes the research directly from Tyndall’s work on micro and nano science that has led to the new sciences of Tensiography and Tensiospectroscopy, Shannon data-scatter-mining, and analytical ultra-fingerprinting methods. From 1972 until present McMillan has been a leader of the Carlow Tyndall Committee who ran the Tyndall Summer School, helped found the Tyndall Mountain Club and has led or been involved in many other campaigns to promote a national appreciation of Tyndall. McMillan's work has generated books, publications, involved organizing the Tyndall Centenary, as well as various campaigns for naming, designing, and building the Tyndall-Dargan Travelling School Exhibition with the London Science Museum. The Tyndall Committee’s work most notably has from 1996 extended via the National Committee for Commemorative Plaques for S&T which is a transformative project promoting recognition of all Irish S&T.