JOHN DALTON

BACKGROUND INFO

• Born: Sept. 6th, 1766 in Eaglesfield, England
• Died: July 27th, 1844 in Manchester, England
• Dalton was a chemist, physicist and meteorologist.

FAMILY

• His father, Joseph Dalton, was a handloom weaver.
• Had a brother, Jonathan, and a sister, Mary.

EARLY LIFE

• Being poor, John Dalton needed to help with the family finances at a young age.
• When Dalton was just 12 years old, he started teaching at the Quaker School.
• At the age of 14, he became the principle of the school.

EDUCATION

• Dalton attended a Quaker school in his village in Cumberland.
• When Dalton was just 12 years old, he started teaching there.
• He pursued his interest in meteorology. He kept daily logs of weather, paying attention to wind velocity and barometric pressure.

DALTON'S LAW

• Dalton's interests in atmospheric pressures eventually led him to closer examination of gases.
• He believed that gas was composed of small individual particles.

DALTON'S LAW CONTINUED

• Dalton's law: the total pressure exerted by a mixture of gases is equal to the sum of the partial pressures of the component gases.

ATOMIC THEORY

• Dalton discovered the atomic theory in 1803.
• Atomic theory is that every form of matter is made up of small individual and indestructible particles called "atoms".
• He explained that atoms within a given element are all exactly the same size and weight, while the atoms of different elements are different from one another.

ATOMIC THEORY CONTINUED

• Dalton created the chart of atomic weights in an article he wrote for the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1803.
• Dalton became the first scientist to explain the behavior of atoms in terms of the measurement of weight.

Atomic Structure Model

TODAY

• Dalton is still recognized today for his red-green colorblindness discovery which explains that colorblindness is hereditary.
• Red-green colorblindness is also known as "Daltonism".

SOURCES

• famousscientists.org
• biography.com
• chemheritage.org