busying himself with revising his translations. In May 1535 he was betrayed by Henry Phillips, to whom he had shown much kindness, as a professing student of the new faith. The imperial officers imprisoned him at Vilvorde Castle, the state prison, 6 m. from Brussels, where in spite of the great efforts of the English merchants and the appeal of Thomas Cromwell to Archbishop Carandolet, president of the council, and to the governor of the castle, he was tried for heresy and condemned. On the 6th of October 1536 he was strangled at the stake and his body afterwards burnt. Though long an exile from his native land, Tyndale was one of the greatest forces of the English Reformation. His writings show sound scholarship and high literary power, while they helped to shape the thought of the Puritan party in England. His translation of the Bible was so sure and happy that it formed the basis of subsequent renderings, especially that of the authorized version of 1611. Besides the New Testament, the Pentateuch and Jonah, it is believed that he finished in prison the section of the Old Testament extending from Joshua to Chronicles.
Beside the works already named Tyndale wrote A Prologue on the Epistle to the Romans (1526), An Exposition of the 1st Epistle of John (1531), An Exposition of Matthew v.–vii. (1532), a treatise on the sacraments (1533), and possibly another (no longer extant) on matrimony (1529).
The works of Tyndale were first published along with those of John Frith (q.v.) and Robert Barnes, “three worthy martyrs and principal teachers of the Church of England,” by John Day, in 1573 (folio). A new edition of the works of Tyndale and Frith, by T. Russell, was published at London (1828–1831). His Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scripture were published by the Parker Society in 1848. For biography, see Foxe’s Acts and Monuments; R. Demaus, William Tyndale (London, 1871); also the Introduction to Mombert’s critical reprint of Tyndale’s Pentateuch (New York, 1884), where a bibliography is given.
TYNDALL, JOHN (1820–1893), British natural philosopher, was born in Co. Carlow, Ireland, on the 2nd of August 1820, his father being the son of a small landowner in poor circumstances, but a man of more than ordinary ability. With Darwin and Huxley his name is inseparably connected with the battle which began in the middle of the 19th century for making the new standpoint of modern science part of the accepted philosophy in general life. For many years, indeed, he came to represent to ordinary Englishmen the typical or ideal professor of physics. His strong, picturesque mode of seizing and expressing things gave him an immense living influence both in speech and writing, and disseminated a popular knowledge of physical science such as had not previously existed. But besides being a true educator, and perhaps the greatest popular teacher of natural philosophy in his generation, he was an earnest and original observer and explorer of nature.
Tyndall was to a large extent a self-made man; he had no early advantages, but with indomitable earnestness devoted himself to study, to which he was stimulated by the writings of Carlyle. He passed from a national school in Co. Carlow to a minor post (1839) in the Irish ordnance survey, thence (1842) to the English survey, attending mechanics’ institute lectures at Preston in Lancashire. He then became for a time (1844) a railway engineer, and in 1847 a teacher at Queenwood College, Hants. Thence with much spirit, and in face of many difficulties, he betook himself, with his colleague Edward Frankland, to the university of Marburg (1848–1851), where, by intense application, he obtained his doctorate in two years. His inaugural dissertation was an essay on screw-surfaces.
Tyndall’s first original work in physical science was in his experiments with regard to magnetism and diamagnetic polarity, on which he was chiefly occupied from 1850 to 1855. While he was still lecturing on natural philosophy at Queenwood College, his magnetic investigations made him known in the higher circles of the scientific world, and through the initiative of Sir E. Sabine, treasurer of the Royal Society, he was elected F.R.S. in June 1852. In 1850 he had made Faraday’s acquaintance, and shortly before the Ipswich meeting of the British Association in 1851 he began a lasting friendship with T. H. Huxley. The two young men stood for chairs of physics and natural history respectively, first at Toronto, next at Sydney, but they were in each case unsuccessful. On the 11th of February 1853, however, Tyndall gave, by invitation, a Friday evening lecture (on “The Influence of Material Aggregation upon the Manifestations of Force”) at the Royal Institution, and his public reputation was at once established. In the following May he was chosen professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution, a post which exactly suited his striking gifts and made him a colleague of Faraday, whom in 1866 he succeeded as scientific adviser to the Trinity House and Board of Trade, and in 1867 as superintendent of the Royal Institution. His reverent attachment to Faraday is beautifully manifested in his memorial volume called Faraday as a Discoverer (1868).
The more original contributions which Tyndall made to science are dealt with elsewhere, in the articles concerned with the various subjects (see Heat, &c.). But his inquiries into glacier motion were notable alike for his association with Switzerland and for prolonged controversy with other men of science on the subject. In 1854, lafter the meeting of the British Association in Liverpool, a memorable visit occurred to the Penrhyn slate quarries, where the question of slaty cleavage arose in his mind, and ultimately led him, with Huxley, to Switzerland to study the phenomena of glaciers. Here the mountains seized him, and he became a constant visitor and one of the most intrepid and most resolute of explorers; among other feats of climbing he was the first to ascend the Weisshorn (1861). The strong, vigorous, healthfulness and enjoyment which permeate the record of his Alpine work are magnificent, and traces of his influence remain in Switzerland to this day. The problem of the flow of glaciers occupied his attention for years, and his views brought him into acute conflict with others, particularly J. D. Forbes and James Thomson. Every one knew that glaciers moved, but the questions were how they moved, for what reason and by what mechanism. Some thought they slid like solids; others that they flowed like liquids; others that they crawled by alternate expansion and contraction, or by alternate freezing and melting; others, again, that they broke and mended. Thus there arose a chaos of controversy, illuminated by definite measurements and observations. Tyndall’s own summary of the course of research on the subject was as follows:—
The idea of semi-fluid motion belongs entirely to Rendu; the proof of the quicker central flow belongs in part to Rendu, but almost wholly to Agassiz and Forbes; the proof of the retardation of the bed belongs to Forbes alone; while the discovery of the locus of the point of maximum motion belongs, I suppose, to me.
But while Forbes asserted that ice was viscous, Tyndall denied it, and insisted, as the result of his observations, on the flow being due to fracture and regelation. All agreed that ice flowed as if it were a viscous fluid; and of this apparent viscosity James Thomson offered an independent explanation by the application of pure thermodynamical theory, which Tyndall considered inefficient to account for the facts he observed. It is unnecessary here to rake among the ashes of this prolonged dispute, but it may be noted that Helmholtz, who, in his lecture on “Ice and Glaciers,” adopted Thomson’s theory, afterwards added in an appendix that he had come to the conclusion that Tyndall had “assigned the essential and principal cause of glacier motion in referring it to fracture and regelation” (1865).
Tyndall’s investigations of the transparency and opacity of gases and vapours for radiant heat, which occupied him during many years (1859–1871), are frequently considered his chief scientific work. But his activities were essentially many-sided. He definitely established the absorptive power of clear aqueous vapour—a point of great meteorological significance. He made brilliant experiments elucidating the blue of the sky, and discovered the precipitation of organic vapours by means of light. He called attention to curious phenomena occurring in the track of a luminous beam. He examined the opacity of the air for sound in connexion with lighthouse and siren work,
