John Dalton
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Dalton, John
Bibliography
See study by A. Thackray (1972).
Dalton, John
Born Sept. 6, 1766, in Eaglesfield, England; died July 27, 1844, in Manchester. English physicist and chemist. Member of the Royal Society of London (1822).
The son of a weaver, Dalton, who was self-educated, taught mathematics in Kendal and Manchester. He was a member (from 1794), secretary (from 1800), and chairman (from 1817) of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. While studying the properties of gas mixtures, he discovered the law of partial gas pressures (1801) and the dependence of the dissolution of gases on their partial pressures (1803). He investigated the dependence of the evaporation of a liquid on pressure, temperature, and other factors. In 1802 he established (somewhat ahead of J. Gay-Lussac and independently of J. Charles) that at constant pressure all gases expand identically when temperature is increased identically. Dalton wrote fundamental works on chemical atomics. In 1794 he was the first to describe a visual defect (from which he himself suffered) that came to be called Daltonism (color blindness).
WORKS
Sbornik izbrannykh rabot po atomistike. Leningrad. 1940. (Translated from English. 1802–10.)REFERENCES
Kedrov, B.M. Atomistika Dal’tona. Moscow-Leningrad. 1949.Henry. W. C. Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Researches of John Dalton. London, 1854.
Smith, R. Memoirs of John Dalton and History of the Atomic Theory up to His Time. London, 1956.