Born in County Carlow in south-eastern Ireland, he attended the local National School there and in 1839 joined the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. Three years later he moved to the English Ordnance Survey where he worked until 1844 when he became a railway surveyor. In 1847 he was appointed to teach mathematics and surveying at Queenwood College. The following year, with Edward Frankland, he moved to Marburg where he spent two years studying with Robert Bunsen taking his PhD in 1850 and the following year spent some time in Berlin. Thereafter he returned to Queenwood College until his appointment at the Royal Institution.
In addition to being Michael Faraday's first biographer, in 1865 Tyndall succeeded him as Scientific Adviser to Trinity House, the lighthouse authority for England and Wales. He held the position until 1883, working on the transmission of sound. He undertook important work on diamagnetism, radiant heat and spontaneous generation. He also worked on glaciers and became a keen mountaineer being the first person, in 1861, to climb the Weisshorn.
Tyndall wrote many popular scientific articles and books and engaged in polemics. His most notable was his Presidential Address to the 1874 meeting of the British Association at Belfast, espousing scientific naturalism - the view that things in nature are best explained without invoking theological explanations.
Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.