Matthew Paul Moyle (4 October 1788 – 7 August 1880) was an English

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists ...

and writer on

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

, the second son of John Moyle, by Julia, daughter of Jonathan Hornblower. He was born at Chacewater,

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

, 4 October 1788, and educated at Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals. He became a member of the

Royal College of Surgeons The Royal College of Surgeons is an ancient college (a form of corporation) established in England to regulate the activity of surgeons. Derivative organisations survive in many present and former members of the Commonwealth. These organisations ...

in 1809, and was afterwards in practice at

Helston Helston () is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated at the northern end of the The Lizard, Lizard Peninsula approximately east of Penzance and south-west of Falmouth, Cornwall, Falmouth.Ordnance Survey: ...

in Cornwall for the long period of sixty-nine years. A considerable portion of his practice consisted in attending the men accidentally injured in the tin and copper mines of his neighbourhood, and his attention was thus led to mining. From 1841 to 1879 he kept meteorological records for the

Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (commonly known as The Poly) is an educational, cultural and scientific Charitable organization#United Kingdom, charity, as well as a local arts and cinema venue, based in Falmouth, Cornwall, England, Unite ...

. He died at Cross Street, Helston, on 7 August 1880, leaving a large family.

Writings

In 1814 he sent to Thomas Thomson's '' Annals of Philosophy'' "Queries respecting the flow of Water in Chacewater Mine"; in the following years he communicated papers on "The Temperature of Mines", "On Granite Veins", and "On the Atmosphere of Cornish Mines". In 1822 he read a paper on the raised temperatures in mines to the

Royal Geological Society of Cornwall The Royal Geological Society of Cornwall is a geological society originally based in Penzance, Cornwall in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1814 to promote the study of the geology of Cornwall, and is the second oldest geological society in ...

. During a series of years he kept registers and made extensive and valuable observations on barometers and thermometers, and in conjunction with Robert Were Fox he wrote and communicated to Alexander Tilloch's ''

Philosophical Magazine The ''Philosophical Magazine'' is one of the oldest scientific journals published in English. It was established by Alexander Tilloch in 1798;John Burnett"Tilloch, Alexander (1759–1825)" Dictionary of National Biography#Oxford Dictionary of ...

'' in 1823, "An Account of the Observations and Experiments on the Temperature of Mines which have recently been made in Cornwall and the North of England". In 1841 he sent to Sturgeon's ''Annals of Electricity'' a paper "On the Formation of Electro-type Plates independently of any engraving", which concerned the then-new process of

electrotyping Electrotyping (also galvanoplasty) is a chemical method for forming metal parts that exactly reproduce a model. The method was invented by a Prussian engineer Moritz von Jacobi in Russia in 1838, and was immediately adopted for applications in ...

References

;Attribution * {{DEFAULTSORT:Moyle, Matthew Paul 1788 births 1880 deaths People from Chacewater 19th-century English medical doctors English meteorologists Writers from Cornwall Geologists from Cornwall