John Dalton - Public and Personal Life

Public and Personal Life

Before he had propounded the atomic theory, he had already attained a considerable scientific reputation. In 1804, he was chosen to give a course of lectures on natural philosophy at the Royal Institution in London, where he delivered another course in 1809–1810. However, some witnesses reported that he was deficient in the qualities that make an attractive lecturer, being harsh and indistinct in voice, ineffective in the treatment of his subject, and singularly wanting in the language and power of illustration.

In 1810, Sir Humphry Davy asked him to offer himself as a candidate for the fellowship of the Royal Society, but Dalton declined, possibly for financial reasons. However, in 1822 he was proposed without his knowledge, and on election paid the usual fee. Six years previously he had been made a corresponding member of the French Académie des Sciences, and in 1830 he was elected as one of its eight foreign associates in place of Davy. In 1833, Earl Grey's government conferred on him a pension of £150, raised in 1836 to £300.

Dalton never married and had only a few close friends, all in all as a Quaker he lived a modest and unassuming life.

He lived for more than a quarter of a century with his friend the Rev. W. Johns (1771–1845), in George Street, Manchester, where his daily round of laboratory work and tuition was broken only by annual excursions to the Lake District and occasional visits to London. In 1822 he paid a short visit to Paris, where he met many distinguished resident scientists. He attended several of the earlier meetings of the British Association at York, Oxford, Dublin and Bristol.