The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 13: The Correspondence, June 1872-September 1873

The 476 letters in the thirteenth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall document the period from June 1, 1872, to September 28, 1873, much of which was consumed by Tyndall’s lecture tour of the United States. We meet him in the midst of the Ayrton affair, which saw Tyndall coming to the defense of his friend and fellow X Club member Joseph Dalton Hooker against the First Commissioner of Works, Acton Smee Ayrton, in an acrimonious dispute over the governance of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Tyndall’s tour of the United States was a rousing success by many measures, but he was not long on American shores before his well-documented skepticism of the efficacy of prayer stoked the waspish ire of the faithful. Tyndall’s return to England in mid-February 1873 saw him begin preparations for his 1874 Belfast Address, when he accepted the presidency of the British Association for the Advancement of Scienceand articulated a defense of materialism that scandalized many of his contemporaries. As we leave him in September 1873, Tyndall is engaged in sharp-elbowed jostling with Scottish physicist Peter Guthrie Tait in the pages of Nature over James David Forbes, whose theory of glacial motion Tait had defended against Tyndall’s attacks, in a scientific disagreement that evolved into a personal one. Amid the tumult of controversy, though, these letters reveal a man of science riding high on widespread esteem, wielding the influence it brought him with gusto, and moving with ease through the rarefied social and intellectual circles into which he had climbed.

Michael D. Barton is an independent scholar. He received an MA in history from Montana State University, where he began working on the John Tyndall Correspondence Project as a letter transcriber. He has also worked on the project to transcribe the correspondence of the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. Barton maintains a blog about Charles Darwin and evolution.

Joseph D. Martin is associate professor in the Department of History at Durham University, where he teaches about the history of modern science and technology and writes about the history of twentieth-century scientific institutions and ideals. He is coeditor of Between Making and Knowing: Tools in the History of Materials Research and author of Solid State Insurrection: How the Science of Substance Made American Physics Matter.

Gregory Radick is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds. His most recent books include Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology and, with Roger White and Jonathan Hodge, Darwin’s Argument by Analogy: From Artificial to Natural Selection.

Roy MacLeod is professor emeritus of history at the University of Sydney. A prolific researcher, he has published over thirty books and edited collections and over forty articles and book chapters. In 2003, he was awarded the Centennial of Federation Medal for services to Australian Society; in 2015, he received the Sarton Medal from the University of Ghent; and in 2020, he was presented the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to education and history.