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by Stewart Ash
he 22nd of September is the 220th anniversary of the birth of, arguable, the greatest ever Englishman, Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867). Although regularly relegated to third place in popularity poles by Winston Churchill and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, he was undoubtedly England’s greatest scientist or natural philosopher, as the profession was known in the Victorian era.
a series of 4 lectures given by the chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778 -1829) at the Royal Society. Afterward, he sent Davy 300 pages of notes he had taken during the lectures. Davy’s response was immediate and positive and, when Davy damaged his eyesight in accident during an experiment, he offered Faraday a job as his secretary. In 1813, Davy appointed him as “Chemical Assistant” at the Royal Institute.
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, now part of the London borough of Southwark, 1 mile south of London Bridge. He was the third of four children, and was born shortly after his father, James, moved the family from Outhgill in Westmorland, where his father had been an apprentice blacksmith. The family was not well off, and so Michael received a very limited formal education. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to a bookbinder, and during his 7 year apprenticeship he educated himself by reading prolifically on a wide range of topics, including a number of scientific books. In 1812, Faraday attended
Faraday’s initial experimental work was in chemistry, as an assistant to Davy. Among many notable achievements he produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes, one of which was used in an historical experiment concerning the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field (the Faraday effect). Perhaps his most notable achievement during this period was the discovery of the laws of electrolysis, from which he has left us the legacy of electro-plating and such terms as anode, cathode, electrode and ion. These terms were largely created by William
Whelwell (1794 -1866), but popularised by Faraday’s work. Undoubtedly, Faraday is best known for his work on electricity and magnetism. In 1821, Faraday produced two devices to demonstrate what he described as electromagnet rotation. This work followed the discovery of the phenomenon of electromagnetism by the Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777 – 1851) and built on the failed attempts to make an electric motor of Davy and William Hyde Woolaston (1766 – 1828). Faraday’s experiments form the foundation of modern electromagnetic motor theory. In 1824, Faraday briefly conducted experiments to try and discover whether a magnetic field could regulate the flow of a current in an adjacent wire but could find no relationship. It wasn’t until 1831, after the death of Davy, that he began a series of experiments through which he discovered electromagnetic induction. It is probable