Joseph Jackson Lister facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joseph Jackson Lister
|
|
|---|---|
Lister before 1869
|
|
| Born | 11 January 1786 City of London, England
|
| Died | 24 October 1869 (aged 83) |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Development of the optical microscope |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Opticist and physicist |
Joseph Jackson Lister (born January 11, 1786 – died October 24, 1869) was a British expert in optics (the study of light and vision) and a physicist. He is most famous for being the father of Joseph Lister, who became a very important surgeon. Joseph Jackson Lister himself made big improvements to the optical microscope.
Early Life and Family
Joseph Jackson Lister's family, the Listers, were originally farmers in Bingley, Yorkshire, England. In the early 1700s, his great-grandparents joined the Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. Most of their family members became Quakers too.
Joseph's grandfather, also named Joseph, moved from Yorkshire to London around 1720 and became a tobacconist. His youngest son, John, was born in 1737. John first worked as a watchmaker, then took over his father's tobacco business. Later, he started a wine business.
In 1764, John Lister married Mary. They had daughters, and then, 19 years later, in 1786, their only son, Joseph Jackson Lister, was born.
Adulthood and Family Life
After finishing school in 1800, Joseph Jackson Lister began working in his father's wine business. The business was doing very well, and by 1804, when he was just 18, he became a partner.
In 1814, he met Isabella Harris at a Quaker school. Isabella was a teacher there. They married in 1818 when she was 26 and he was 32. They lived in London for a few years. In 1825, they bought a large old house called Upton House in Upton, Essex.
Upton was a quiet country area near London, with fields and gardens. Their neighbors were the Gurney family, who were bankers. The Lister and Gurney families became close friends.
Joseph and Isabella had several children. Their son, Joseph, born in 1827, became a famous surgeon. He was known for his groundbreaking work in antisepsis, which meant using clean methods to prevent infections during surgery. This work saved many lives and earned him a special title, Lord Lister. Joseph Jackson Lister was very proud of his son's achievements and supported him greatly.
Another grandson of Joseph Jackson Lister was also named Joseph Jackson Lister. He became a naturalist, studying plants and animals.
Improving the Microscope
Joseph Jackson Lister was very interested in nature. He noticed that the microscopes available in the early 1800s weren't good enough to see tiny details of plant cells and animal cells. He wanted to improve them so scientists could see more clearly.
He decided to make better lenses for microscopes. Lenses often caused problems like chromatic aberration (colors appearing blurry) and spherical aberration (light not focusing correctly). Lister worked to fix these issues by carefully changing how the lenses were shaped and spaced. He did all this in his free time, while still running his wine business!
He started this work in 1824. By 1826, he had a special microscope stand built by an instrument maker named James Smith. This improved microscope stand is now kept in the Wellcome Institute.
In 1830, Lister shared his discoveries in a paper called "On Some Properties in Achromatic Object-Glasses Applicable to the Improvement of the Microscope." He presented it to the Royal Society, a famous scientific group. His work, especially his "law of aplanatic foci," became a key principle for how microscopes were designed.
Lister knew many important scientists, like Airy and Herschel. He discussed his observations, including those of red blood cells, with his friend Dr. Thomas Hodgkin. This led to the discovery of a disease later named 'Hodgkin's disease'. In 1832, Joseph Jackson Lister was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a great honor for a scientist.
Later Years
Joseph Jackson Lister was deeply saddened by the early death of his son John in 1846. After this, he seemed to stop his work on optics. His youngest daughter, who had been living at home, got married in 1858. Then, in 1859, his son William Henry died.
His wife, Isabella, who had been ill for a long time, passed away in September 1864 at age 72. Joseph spent his last five years feeling lonely, even though some of his children and many grandchildren lived nearby. He noted that his friends and people his age were "falling like autumn leaves."
His greatest joy in his final years was receiving weekly letters from his son Joseph, who was in Edinburgh. He loved watching his son's progress and discoveries in medicine.
Joseph Jackson Lister died at his home, Upton House, in October 1869, at the age of 83. He was buried next to his wife Isabella in the Friends' Burial Ground in Stoke Newington, Middlesex.
