Considered to be the top scientist of his time and among the greatest ever, Michael Faraday, with little education or mathematical knowledge, used his practical abilities and powers of reasoning to make great discoveries about gas liquefaction, electrolysis, magnetic induction, diamagnetism and force field theory.
We see the results of his work all around us today; electric motors, electricity generation and transmission systems, dyes which colour our clothes, precision lenses, steel razors and cutlery, chlorinated water supplies, aeroplanes safe from lightning strike, effective lighthouses and radio waves which carry communications deep into space. These are all technologies which emanated from his enquiring mind and experimental skills - yet he never patented anything. Many common terms like electrode, electrolyte, ion, anode and cathode were coined by Faraday.
Apprenticed in his youth as a bookbinder, he became fascinated with chemistry and in 1813 obtained a post at the Royal Institution, London, as laboratory assistant to Sir Humphry Davy. By 1825 he had become director of the laboratory and in 1833 was appointed as Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Institution. Their laboratory was the best in Britain and among the finest in Europe.
Faraday become a first rate experimentalist with the manual skills and imagination to construct his own apparatus and instruments and adapt them to eliminate problems and errors as he homed in on the points he had set out to prove.
His chemistry and research abilities meant he was in great demand as a consultant. The British government and such organisations as the Admiralty and Trinity House which controlled the British Lighthouse Service, all sought his advice. He was Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where he lectured several generations of army engineers and artillery cadets.
The title ’scientist’ was not favoured in Faraday’s time and he did not like the term ’physicist’, preferring to be known as a Natural Philosopher - one who explored the phenomena of nature in order to understand and explain how they functioned.
We see the results of his work all around us today; electric motors, electricity generation and transmission systems, dyes which colour our clothes, precision lenses, steel razors and cutlery, chlorinated water supplies, aeroplanes safe from lightning strike, effective lighthouses and radio waves which carry communications deep into space. These are all technologies which emanated from his enquiring mind and experimental skills -
Apprenticed in his youth as a bookbinder, he became fascinated with chemistry and in 1813 obtained a post at the Royal Institution, London, as laboratory assistant to Sir Humphry Davy. By 1825 he had become director of the laboratory and in 1833 was appointed as Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Institution. Their laboratory was the best in Britain and among the finest in Europe.
Faraday become a first rate experimentalist with the manual skills and imagination to construct his own apparatus and instruments and adapt them to eliminate problems and errors as he homed in on the points he had set out to prove.
His chemistry and research abilities meant he was in great demand as a consultant. The British government and such organisations as the Admiralty and Trinity House which controlled the British Lighthouse Service, all sought his advice. He was Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where he lectured several generations of army engineers and artillery cadets.
The title ’scientist’ was not favoured in Faraday’s time and he did not like the term ’physicist’, preferring to be known as a Natural Philosopher -
Faraday at work in the basement
laboratory of the Royal Institution
in London.
From a painting by Harriet Moore
laboratory of the Royal Institution
in London.
From a painting by Harriet Moore
Faraday with a friend,
experimenting with
liquified chlorine.
experimenting with
liquified chlorine.
The Scientist
