John Tyndall (1820-1893) is one of Ireland's greatest scientists and
educators. Amongst his many achievements, he is best known for the
explanation of why the sky is blue - the scattering of light by small
particles suspended in the atmosphere. This colour is described as
Tyndall Blue. He was also a gifted public lecturer, an avid promoter of
the public understanding of science, and a famous mountaineer. Beside
that Tyndall was one of the first scientists to recognise the earth's
natural greenhouse effect and to identify the relative radiative forcing
values of the different greenhouse gases. In 1853 he was appointed
Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution in London and
began to work beside Michael Faraday. He succeeded Faraday as
Superintendent in 1862.