DALTON, JOHN, was b. Sept. 5, 1766, at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, in Cumber land. He received his early education in the school of his native place, and, after 1781, in a boarding-school kept by a relative in Kendal. here his love of mathematical and physical studies was first developed. He wrote several mathematical essays, and in 1788, commenced a journal of meteorological observations, which he continued through out his whole life. In 1793, he was appointed teacher of mathematics and the physical sciences in the new college at Manchester, where he chiefly resided during the remainder of his life, though frequently employed, after 1804, in giving lectures on chemistry in several large towns. In the years 1808-10, he published his New System of Chemical Philosophy, 2 parts (Land.), to which lie added a third part in 1827. In 1817, lie was appointed president of the literary and philosophical society at Manchester. Ile was also a member of the royal society, and of the Paris ...cademy, and, in 1833, received a pension of £150, afterwards raised to £300. In the same year, D.'s friends and fellow townsmen collected £2,000, to raise a statue to his honor, which was executed by Chantrey, and placed at the' entrance or the royal institution in Manchester. D. was also honored by the university of Oxford with the degree of D.C.L., and with that of
LL.D. by the university of Edinburgh. He died, universally respected, at Manchester, July 27, 1844. His chief physical researches were those on the constitution of mixed gases, on the force of steam, on the elasticity of vapors, and on the expansion of gases by heat. In chemistry, lie distinguished himself by his progressive development of the atomic theory (q.v.), as also by his researches on the absorption of gases by water, on carbonic acid, carburetted hydrogen, etc. His treatises are mostly contained in the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of _Manchester, the Philosophical Trans actions, Nicholson's PhilosOyhical Journal, and Thomson's Annals of Philosophy. Besides these, we have his Meteorological Essays and Observations (Loud. 1793; 2(1 ed. 1834). D. was unquestionably one of the greatest chemists that any country has produced. Profound, patient, and intuitive, lie lied precisely the faculties requisite for a great scientific discoverer. His atomic theory elevated chemistry into a science. In his habits, D. was simple; in his manners, grave and but kindly, and distinguished by his truthfulness and integrity of character.