Dalton, Jonathan

As a child Dalton was sent, along with his older brother Jonathan, to Pardshaw Hall School, about two miles from his home. There he had an excellent teacher in John Fletcher, who did not believe that students should be force-fed Latin, as they were in most English schools, and who encouraged Dalton to pursue his interest in mathematics. Dalton pursued mathematics tenaciously. If he encountered a problem he couldn t solve at first, he continued to work at it until he found an answer. 

Dalton never married. He said he had no time for such a luxury. Yet he enjoyed the society of beautiful and talented women. In Lancaster there was a family of Friends he never failed to visit when in the neighborhood In writing to his brother Jonathan, who likewise remained a bachelor, John was not ashamed to admit his infatuation. Next to Hannah, he declared, her sister Ann takes it in my eyes before all others. She is a perfect model of personal beauty. He is even said to have composed verse to this lady. When he visited London in 1809 to attend a meeting of the Royal Society, he reported to his brother, I see the belles of New Bond Street every day. I am more taken up with their faces than their dress. Some of the ladies seem to have their dresses so tight around them as a drum, others throw them round like a blanket I do not know how it happens, but I fancy pretty women look well anyhow. ... 

Dalton (Figure 6.1) was bom In Eaglesfield, near the English Lake District. His father was a hand loom weaver, and, since the family were Quakers, Dalton was educated at the local Quaker schools. At the age of twelve he opened his own Quaker school, but he had little authority over some of his rougher pupils, and he soon relinquished his post to work as a farm-hand. At the age of fifteen he moved to Kendal to assist at a Quaker boarding school where his brother Jonathan was already teaching, and four years later the brothers were in charge of the school. 

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