Who Is John Dalton

John Dalton was born September 6, 1766. He was born in Eaglesfield, England. His parents, Joseph Dalton and Deborah Greenup, were both Quakers which limited many opportunities. Quakers, like many other religions at the time, were not approved of by Catholics. Dalton had two siblings, a sister named Mary and a brother named Jonathon. Jonathon and John both were afflicted with colorblindness. When he was fifteen John and his brother helped a school for Quakers, which they previously attended, in a town named Kendal. Dalton was self-taught in many things like science and mathematics. He also became fluent in French, Latin, and Greek. When he was just nineteen Dalton became the principal of the Quaker boarding school and continued his teaching career until he was twenty-six. By the year 1793, Dalton moved on to be a tutor at the New College in Manchester, England. With this job came access to a laboratory and thus started his scientific career. …show more content…
Later Dalton began to focus his studies on the nature of gases. He proposed a theory, which was later found out to be correct, that if the temperature is low enough and if the pressure is high enough gases could go into a liquid state. His Law of Partial Pressures, published in 1803, says that the total gas pressure is equal to the sum of the partial pressures. And now for one of the most notable things Dalton has ever done, his creation of the Atomic Theory. He referenced to Democritus when proposing the theory that all things were made of much smaller components. In his book, A New System of Chemical Philosophy, Dalton discusses that atoms of any element could be distinguished by their mass. As we know now Dalton was correct about the ability to separate the elements and many other things that he proposed under the atomic