ABSTRACT
When John Tyndall was elected to the professorship of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution in June 1853, he joined an organisation that was then, as it is unique. For nearly a decade Tyndall and Michael Faraday often worked side by side in the Royal Institution's basement laboratory. In the lecture theatre as in the laboratory, Faraday was Tyndall's mentor and model. Although Faraday gave no more afternoon lecture courses once Tyndall had arrived, he continued his Friday Evening Discourses and his annual courses of Juvenile Lectures at Christmas. Of all the friendships he had formed at the Royal Institution, Tyndall's ties to Faraday and the Pollocks were the two he was most reluctant to break by leaving London. Thomas Henry Huxley, with some support from the Pollocks, also recruited Tyndall into what became one of his most influential forums for the scientific education of the public, intellectual journalism.
