DEATH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1136, 8 December 1893, Page 38

DEATH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

London, December 5. •Professor Tyndall is dead. Professor John Tyndall," LL.D., D.C.L. E.R.S., was born August 21, 1820, in the ' village of Leighlin-bridge, near Carlow, in Ireland- His parents were in very modest circumstances, but they gave him a sound English education. At the age of nineteen he joined in the capacity of “ civil assistant” a division of the Ordnance Survey which was stationed in his native town. In 1844 he was engaged by a firm in Manchester, and for about three years he was employed in engineering Operations in connection with railways. In 1847 he accepted an appointment as teacher in Queenwood College, in Hampshire, a new institution, devoted partly to a junior school and partly to the preliminary technical education of agriculturists and engineers. There he became acquainted With Mr (now Dr) Frankland, who was resident chemist tp the college, and there he began those original investigations which have placed him in the foremost rank among the explorers of science. In .1848 the two friends quitted England together and repaired to the University of Marburg, in Hesse-Cassel, where they studied under Bunsen and other eminent professors. Afterwards Mr Tyndall prosecuted his researches in the laboratory of Magnus, in Berlin. He returned to England in 1851, and in 1853, having been previously elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, was chosen Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, succeeding the celebrated Faraday as superintendent. He and his friend Professor Huxley visited the glaciers of Switzerland in 1856. Prof. Tyndall was made LL.D. of Cambridge in •1855, and LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1866, when Mr Carlyle was installed Rector of the University, and afterwards D.C.L. of Oxford. On the occasion of his receiving the honorary degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, June 18, 1873, Dr Heurtley, Margaret Professor of Divinity, protested against the proceeding on the ground that Professor Tyndall “ had signalised himself by writing against and denying the credibility of miracles and the efficacy of prayer, thus contravening the whole tenor of that hook, which, with its open page inscribed * Dominus illuminatio inea/ the University still bears as her device, and therefore still professes to acknowledge as her guide.” In 1872 Professor Tyndall went on a lecturing tour in the United States, in the course of which he delivered 35 lectures, thus realising a sum of 23,000 dollars. Deducting expenses, the residue was carefully invested, and rose in a few years to 33,000 dollars, which was devoted to the founding of scientific scholarships in Harvard and Columbia Colleges, and in the University of Pennsylvania. He was the author of many scientific works.