John Pringle Nichol

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John Pringle Nichol
John Pringle Nichol

John Pringle Nichol

phrenologist, astronomer and economist who did much to popularise astronomy
in a manner that appealed to nineteenth century tastes.

Early life

Born at Huntly Hill, near

phrenological thinking led him to abandon the Church for education.[1]

Nichol held a number of posts in education and journalism and corresponded with many leading thinkers of the times, including

Nassau Senior nominated him as Jean-Baptiste Say's successor as professor of political economy at the Collège de France though he was at the time too ill to take the post.[1]

Astronomy

In 1836 and in competition with

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier.[2] He lived at the Glasgow Observatory.[3]

Nichol turned to popular lecturing and authored a number of popular and successful books about astronomy, especially championing the nebular hypothesis.[2][4] In 1841 George Eliot wrote:[1]

I have been revelling in Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System, and have been in imagination winging my flight from system to system, and from universe to universe ...

William John Macquorn Rankine declared Nichol's Dictionary of the Physical Sciences to be:[1]

... almost unparalleled for the extent and accuracy of the information that it contains in a small bulk."

Private life

grave of John Pringle Nichol, Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh

In 1831 Nichol married Jane Tullis of Cupar in Fife (1813-1851).

Their eldest son,

FRSE (1834–1924).[5]

Nichol was a member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society.

During the late 1840s, his health declined and, stemming from his physician's

opiates. He recorded an account of his drug-addiction illness and its cure by hydrotherapy at the Ben Rhydding Hydro in his book Memorials from Ben Rhydding (1852).[6]

He died at Glenburn House in

Grange Cemetery in south Edinburgh.[7]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f MacLehose, James (1886). "71. John Pringle Nichol, 1804–1859". Memoirs and Portraits of One Hundred Glasgow Men who have died during the last thirty years and in their lives did much to make the city what it now is. Vol. 2. Glasgow: James MacLehose & Sons. pp. 249–252.
  2. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20084. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  3. ^ Glasgow Post Office Directory 1858
  4. ^ Schaffer, S. (1989) "The nebular hypothesis and the science of progress", in History, Humanity and Evolution, ed. J. R. Moore, pp. 131–54
  5. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
  6. ^ Nichol (1852). Memorials from Ben Rhydding Concerning the Place, its People, its Cures. London: Charles Gilpin.
  7. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 30 October 2017.

Bibliography

Obituaries

Academic offices
Preceded by
Glasgow University

1836–1859 		Succeeded by
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