John Tyndall
From Philosopedia
Tyndall, John (2 August 1820 - 4 December 1893)
Tyndall, an Irish scientist, succeeded Michael Faraday as professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution in 1867.
In 1856 he had studied in Switzerland with Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, and they wrote a joint work on glaciers.
His philosophical writings are reprinted in a two-volume work, Fragments of Science (1881), and show him to be a naturalist and an agnostic.
He contributed in 1866 to the Fortnightly Review, notably an article on miracles and special providence.
In 1874, when he was appointed President of the British Association, Tyndall, according to Joseph McCabe, made his address “so pointedly materialistic that it roused a storm throughout Britain.”
Although most of the progressive and innovative British physicists of his time were conservative or orthodox in religion, Tyndall was outspokenly in support of Darwin's theory of evolution and favored a barrier between religion and science.
