Susannah Clemmons Mika Murray Period 3 John Dalton Susannah Clemmons Mika Murray Period 3

John Dalton was born on September 6, 1766 to a Quaker family in Eaglesfield, England. He had two siblings. Both he and his brother were born color-blind.

Dalton was just 12 years old when he started teaching at Cumberland. During his early years, Dalton researched color-blindness. As a result of contributions to the understanding of red-green color blindness, the condition is still often referred to as “Daltonism.”

Dalton's experiments on gases led to his discovery that the total pressure of a mixture of gases amounted to the sum of the partial pressures. In 1803, this scientific principle officially came to be known as Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures.

Dalton’s interest with gases gradually led him to formally assert that every form of matter was made up of small individual particles. He became the first scientist to explain the behavior of atoms in terms of the measurement of weight. He later composed a table listing atomic weights of all known elements.

Dalton's theory also examined compositions of compounds, explaining that the tiny particles (atoms) in a compound were compound atoms. Dalton died on July 26, 1844 in his sleep after having a stroke.