John Tyndall was born in County Carlow, Ireland, the son of a police constable whose ancestors came to southeast Ireland from Gloucestershire. He was hired by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in 1839, later working for the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain.

In 1847 Tyndall became a mathematics and surveying teacher for the boarding school Queenwood College, where he met fellow schoolmaster Edward Frankland. The pair soon thereafter went to Germany, enrolling at the University of Marburg, and Tyndall extended his studies to research magnetism under Hermann Knoblauch.

This work made Tyndall a leading scientist of his era, and he was elected a Royal Society Fellow in 1852. He was appointed a professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution in London, later serving as Michael Faraday's successor at the Institution. He retired in 1887.

After visiting the Alps in the mid-1850s, Tyndall became a pioneering mountain climber, spending many summers in the Alps.