Withington village centre

Withington is a village in the City of Manchester, in North West England. It lies 4 miles (6.4 km) immediately south of Manchester City Centre, about 0.4 miles (0.6 km) south of Fallowfield, 0.5 miles (0.8 km) north-east of Didsbury, and 1 mile (1.6 km) east of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near the centre-to-south edges of the Greater Manchester conurbation; it is in the Manchester Withington parliamentary constituency. Withington is a dormitory village consisting of a resident population slightly over 14,000 people.

In the early 13th century, Withington occupied a feudal estate that included the townships of Withington, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Moss Side, Rusholme, Burnage, Denton and Haughton, ruled by the Hathersage, Longford and Tatton families, and within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire.

Withington was largely rural until the mid-nineteenth century, in which it experienced rapid socioeconomic development and urbanisation due to the Industrial Revolution, and Manchester's growing level of industrialisation. Introduced into the inner boundaries of Manchester in 1904, Withington was integrated into the city forty-five years after it gained city status.

John Dalton

John Dalton (September 6, 1766 – July 27, 1844) was an English chemist, meteorologist and physicist, born at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth in Cumbria. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory, and his research into colour blindness (sometimes referred to as Daltonism, in his honour).

Around 1790 Dalton seems to have considered taking up law or medicine, but his projects were not met with encouragement from his relatives, and he remained at Kendal until, in the spring of 1793, moving to Manchester. Mainly through John Gough, a blind philosopher to whom he owed much of his scientific knowledge, Dalton was appointed teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy at the Manchester Academy. He remained in that position until the college's relocation to York in 1803, when he became a public and private teacher of mathematics and chemistry.