Faraday, Michael (1791-1867)

Michael Faraday was the son of a blacksmith who lived in London. He became a self-taught scientist whose greatest discoveries concerned electricity. In 1831 Faraday proved that magnets can be used to produce an electric current. This discovery enabled him to build an electric generator. It was a forerunner of the giant dynamos that keep the modern world supplied with power.

When M. Faraday was about 12, Michael left school to work as a job boy in a bookshop. The bookseller liked him and offered to teach him to bind books. During the next 7 years Michael read many kinds of books while he cut and bound the pages. He became particularly interested in scientific books-especially ones about chemistry and the new science of electricity.

One of the customers was impressed by the young man’s interest. He gave Michael tickets to a series of lectures by a famous British scientist, Sir Humphry Davy, in 1812. The lectures convinced Faraday that his future lay in science. What he wanted most was to work for Davy.

He had taken detailed notes on Davys lectures. Carefully he copied the notes, bound them into a booklet, and sent them to Sir Humphry. In the spring of 1813 Davy hired Faraday as a laboratory assistant. That fall Davy set out to visit some European scientists. He took Faraday along as his secretary. During the next year and a half Faraday met some of the world’s most famous scientists, among them Volta, Ampère, and Humboldt. When Davy and Faraday returned to London in 1815, the young man was no longer merely a secretary. He now worked side by side with Sir Humphry (and later succeeded him as director of the Royal Institution). When Faraday married in 1821, he and his bride moved into two rooms at the institution. From that time on the institution was the centre of his activities.

As a professor of chemistry, he was an excellent lecturer and even started a special series of lectures for children. But most of his time was devoted to research. In his laboratory Faraday made discoveries that opened new areas of science. For instance, he discovered benzene, used as a base for permanent dyes. He produced the first stainless steel and was first to compress certain gases until they became liquid. He discovered the laws of electrolysis, which describe what happens when electricity passes through solutions.

In Faradays time scientists were just beginning to learn about electricity and magnetism. Davy had been interested in electromagnetism, and Faraday experimented with it himself. Gradually it became his main work.

On October 17, 1831, he described in his notebook one of his most famous experiments. It was a simple one. He wound a coil of wire around a paper cylinder and attached the ends of the wire to a galvanometer, or current detector. When he pushed a straight magnet into the cylinder, the needle of the galvanometer jumped, showing that a current was passing through the wire. As long as he kept the magnet moving, the needle moved. When the magnet was still, there was no current. Faraday had discovered that a moving magnet makes an electric current in a wire. It was this discovery that made possible the development of modern electrical machines.

Faraday was so deeply absorbed in his work that he scarcely noticed the honours coming to him from many parts of the world. He continued to work in the laboratory every day until he was nearly 75. His assistants became concerned over his failing health and growing absent-mindedness. Finally, paralysis forced him to retire to a house in Hampton Court, a gift from Queen Victoria. There he died quietly on August 25, 1867.