Gough, John
Name: John Gough
Achievements: Writing on scientific subjects
Born: January 17, 1757; Kendal, Westmorland, England
Died: July 28, 1825; Kendal, Westmorland, England (Aged 68)
Field & Discipline: Science; Science Writer
Language: English
Father: Nathan Gough
Mother: Susannah
Siblings: Sisters
Spouse: Mary Harrison
Children: 4 sons; 5 daughters
Education: Quaker school, Kendal
Major Work:
Life & Times: Gough lost his sight after an attack of smallpox. His father encouraged him to develop his sense of touch and in the first year of Gough’s blindness made him hold an earthworm, which Gough recognized as one of the few objects he remembering seeing before being blinded. He was also allowed to handle the animals in a traveling menagerie.
He was educated by Quakers and natural history, particularly botany, became his chief interest. He could recognize plants by handling them and he used his tongue to identify the arrangement of stamens and pistils within the flower. He memorized botanical terms and classifications from books read out to him and he set up a botanical study group among his school fellows.
At the age of fifteen, he began conducting simple physical scientific experiments in his father’s workshop. When he was eighteen someone gave him a device called a puzzling ring to while away a wet afternoon. Gough succeeded in extracting the nine rings from each other and was fascinated by the permutations he had had to work out in order to do so.
He decided to study mathematics and at the age of twenty-one, he went to live as a resident pupil with the mathematics tutor John Slee in a remote northern area of the Lake District. Gough designed his own abacus, which he adapted for the study of algebra and geometry. After eighteen months he returned to Kendal where he remained for the rest of his life.
He taught a select number of pupils privately, among whom were [taught] Whewell* and the chemist [taught] Dalton*, and he continued to study natural history, philosophy and mathematics. He wrote numerous papers and between 1786-1813 he submitted fourteen essays to the Manchester Philosophical Society and almost forty papers to a philosophical journal.
The subjects he discussed in his writings included observations on the vegetation of seeds, on the variety of voices, the theory of compound sounds, the nature of grave harmonies, the nature of musical sounds, migratory birds, the supposed revival of insects after long immersion in wine or other intoxicating liquor, instances of suspended animation in vegetables, the law of motion of a cylinder and a description of india rubber.
Gough also wrote an essay on the theory of mixed gases and the state of water in the atmosphere, and he published a reply to Dalton’s objections to a “late theory of mixed gases”. His lack of self-pity, his intellectual curiosity and his skill in using his remaining senses impressed all who met him.
The poet [a fan was] Wordsworth* wrote some admiring lines on Gough in his poem “The Excursion” and [a fan was] Coleridge* claimed in his essay on “The Soul and its Organs of Sense” that Gough’s descriptions of organic matter were more accurate than those given by people with vision. Gough died in 1825.
Assessment: Gough is remembered as one of John Dalton’s teachers.
Oneliner: John Gough, who taught John Dalton.
Bibliography:
- Nicholson, Cornelius, The Annals of Kendal with Biographical Sketches of Many Eminent Personages Connected with the Town, Whitaker & Co., London, 1861.