Personal Life Date/place of birth: September 6, 1766, in Eagles field, England Date/place of death: July 26, 1844 Manchester, England Parents’ names: His father, Joseph Dalton, was a poor weaver. His mother is Deborah Greenup. Siblings: (Brother) Jonathan and (Sister) Mary. He was born with red/green color blindness. He was never married and devoted his life to science. He was an educator (as early as 12 years old), scholar, chemist, meteorologist and journalist. He worked almost all his life in Manchester as a private tutor. (5)
Education
Young Dalton went to John Fletcher’s Quaker school in Eaglesfield. He was influenced by his mentors: Elihu Robinson and John Gough. They taught him to build and to use instruments of meteorology as well as recording weather daily. They also taught him the fundamentals of mathematics, Greek, and Latin. Mostly he educated himself. His Works
Meteorology: He recorded weather observation everyday for more than 40 years since 1787.
Color Blindness: He claimed that “color perception was caused by discoloration of the liquid medium of the eyeball.” (4) He also claimed that his eyeballs are colored blue that is why he is colorblind. It is now known that colorblindness is caused by a missing gene. Theory of Gas: “The total pressure of a mixture of gases is the sum of the partial pressures of the various components.” (3)
Atomic Theory: Researched in the gases led Dalton to the atomic theory. His postulates are: “Matter is made up of atoms that are indivisible and indestructible”. In later years, the atom was proven to be divisible in protons, electrons and neutrons. With the development of nuclear physics, the destruction of atoms can be done by nuclear chain reactions. All atoms of an element are identical to each other. In modern times, this is proven wrong because the elements’ atoms have different mass and density. Such as the isotopes, these are atoms of the same element but different atomic weight. Atoms of different elements have different weights and different chemical properties. This is wrong because some elements have the same atomic mass which is called the isobar such as Argon and Calcium with an atomic mass of forty.