John Dalton: the Father of Chemistry Essay

He died on July 26, 1844, in Manchester, England. He was born in a Quaker family. He had two siblings, and he and his brother were both colorblind. His father was a handloom weaver, and the family did not have much money. Dalton wanted a higher education but couldn't because he had to work to help the family with finances. At the age of twelve, Dalton started teaching at a Quaker school in Cumberland. He later left and started working at a Quaker boarding school in Kendal as an assistant. Within four years, he was made principal of the school. In 1793, he became a philosophy and math tutor at New College in Manchester.
One of Dalton's first projects, he started research in meteorology. He published a book, Metrological Findings, his first year at Manchester. He studied and kept logs of the weather, mostly wind velocity and barometric pressure. He also researched color blindness since he and his brother were both colorblind and thought that it must be hereditary. He used his own eye tissue to get a genetic analysis. His theory was proved to be true. He found that he was missing the photoreceptor for perceiving the color green. Due to his findings, color blindness is often referred to as "Daltonism."
In the early 1800's, he discovered that the makeup in the air was not a chemical solvent, as many other scientists had believed, but a system made up of small particles that used pressure applied by gas independently. In 1803, Dalton's experiment on gases, he discovered "that the total pressure of a mixture of gases amounted to the sum of the partial pressures that each individual gas exerted while occupying the same space." This theory became known as Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures. In the early 1800's, Dalton introduced a "new law of thermal expansion that illustrated heating and cooling reaction of gasses to expansion and compression."
In 1803, Dalton made the first chart of atomic weights. He went on to write another book, A New System of Chemical Philosophy. In this book, he wrote about his belief "that atoms of different elements could be universally distinguished based on their varying atomic weights." As he wrote his book, he found out that atoms cannot be made or destroyed.
From 1817 until his death, Dalton was president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. In 1832, Dalton received an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from Oxford University. In 1834, a statue was made in his honor in London.
Dalton suffered a stroke in 1837. After having a second stroke on July 26, 1844, he died. Most of his discoveries of the atomic theory are still relevant even today.
The Manchester Museum held a tribute to Dalton about his life and groundbreaking discoveries in 2003, on the bicentennial of the announcement of his atomic theory.
"John Dalton Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.
"John Dalton | Chemical Heritage Foundation." John Dalton | Chemical Heritage Foundation. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.