john dalton
...math and chemistry. Seventeen years after becoming a secretary, he became president of the society and held it to his death in 1844. While growing up Dalton was intrigued by a meteorologist who influenced him in his ultimate work, his diary which was started in 1787. He kept this diary until his death and wrote over 200,000 entries in it observing the climate where he lived. This led to the confirmation of his theory that rain was caused by a decrease in temperature not by changes in pressure. It interested Dalton so much that he wrote his first book called Meteorological Observations and Essays. At the age of twenty-six something interesting happened. John bought his mother some new stockings for her birthday. She looked at them and replied, “Why did you buy me scarlet stockings?” John thought that they were blue along with his brother. This led them to believe that they both were color-blind. Therefore, in France, color-blindness was known as Daltonism. Dalton’s interest in chemistry led to many studies on gases. One of his earliest works led to the development of the Law of Partial Pressures. This law states that the pressure of a mixture of gases equals the sum of the pressures of the gases in the mixture, each one independently. Wanting to learn m...