Birth of John Dalton

John Dalton was born on 6 September 1766 in Cumberland. An English chemist, physicist and meteorologist, Dalton is best known for his atomic theory, which proposed that each chemical element consists of atoms of a single, characteristic weight, and that compounds form when atoms combine in simple ratios. He published a first table of relative atomic weights and formulated the law of partial pressures of gases, named Dalton's law. He also provided an early scientific description of color blindness, from which he himself suffered, and which was long called Daltonism. A devout Quaker from a modest background, he spent most of his career teaching in Manchester.

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