Professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution between 1853 and 1887, the British physicist and mountaineer John Tyndall (1820 93) passionately sought to share scientific understanding with the Victorian public. A lucid and highly regarded communicator, he lectured on such topics as heat, light, magnetism and electricity. In this collection of eight lectures, first published in 1867, Tyndall explains numerous acoustic phenomena for a non-specialist audience. Emphasising the practical nature of scientific enquiry, he describes experiments throughout and includes many illustrations of...