John Ball

20 August 1818 – 21 October 1889

John Ball (1818–1889), Irish politician, naturalist and Alpine traveller, eldest son of an Irish judge, Nicholas Ball, was born at Dublin on the 20th of August 1818. He was educated at the Roman Catholic College at Oscott near Birmingham, and at Christ's College, Cambridge. He showed in early years a taste for natural science, particularly botany; and after leaving Cambridge he travelled in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe, studying his favourite pursuits, and contributing papers on botany and the Swiss glaciers to scientific periodicals. In 1846 he was made an assistant poor-law commissio