John Tyndall Conference, Dublin, Ireland, Sept. 2011 – abstracts due by July 1st

Via:

The Royal Irish Academy and the Environmental Protection Agency are holding a scientific conference on 28-30 September 2011, in Dublin, Ireland, to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of John Tyndall’s breakthrough experimental work on the absorption of infrared radiation by various atmospheric gases that are essentially transparent to solar radiation

John Tyndall is an overlooked genius from Ireland whose work revolutionised science and created entirely new experimental techniques and scientific disciplines. His work on infra-red spectroscopy served to form the basis of our understanding of the Earth’s climate system and current awareness of the threats of global warming and climate change. In this, he is ranked with the greatest physicists of 19th and 20th century – “Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius, Kirchoff, Planck and Einstein”, (Ray Pierrehumbert, Physics Today, Jan 2011). In the 150 years since the publication of Tyndalls seminal work, the sciences of atmospheric radiative transfer and climate have developed and deepened our understanding of the world we live in and our impact upon it.

This conference will celebrate Tyndall’s achievements and examine developments in key areas of climate science, current scientific issues and their implications. It will also celebrate the increasing recognition of Tyndall’s work and reputation.

Topics and Call for Abstracts:

The Tyndall Conference 2011 will cover the following topics, and the Scientific Advisory Committee would like to invite the submission of abstracts on topics 2 and 3:

John Tyndall: his life, work and scientific legacy – A number of presentations highlighting different aspects of Tyndall’s contribution to science.
Greenhouse Warming Potentials and other metrics for comparison of radiatively active substances.
Climate feedbacks: the current science.

Abstracts should be submitted by July 1st 2011.

Work on Tyndall from Ciaran Toal

Ciaran Toal has a forthcoming article that assesses the impact of Tyndall on the Association in the 1870s:

Toal, C. ‘Preaching at the British Association for the Advancement of Science: sermons, secularisation and the rhetoric of conflict in the 1870s,’ British Journal for the History of Science

He has also done work on Tyndall in Bristol 1875, one year after the “Belfast address,” which he will be presenting at the British Society for the History of Science conference this summer: “After Tyndall: Science, Religion and the Bristol Meeting of the British Association.”