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MANY READERS will know that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Another breakthrough occurred in science that fateful year, this one with an Irish connection. The discovery attracted much less attention than Darwin’s theory of evolution at the time, but it has become one of the hottest topics in science today.

In July 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall, one of the great scientists of the 19th century, established that certain atmospheric gases absorb heat quite strongly. This innocuous-sounding discovery was established over a few short weeks, but it provided the solution to one of the great riddles of science: the “greenhouse effect”.