Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22 1791 – August 25 1867) was a British scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

His main discoveries include that of the magnetic field, electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis.

Although Faraday receives little formal education he is one of the most influential scientists in history, and historians of science refer to him as having been the best experimentalist in the history of science.

It is by his research on the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday establishes the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics.

Faraday also establishes that magnetism can affect rays of light and that there is an underlying relationship between the two phenomena.

He similarly discovers the principle of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and the laws of electrolysis.

His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices form the foundation of electric motor technology, and it is largely due to his efforts that electricity becomes viable for use in technology.

As a chemist, Faraday discovers benzene, investigates the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invents an early form of the Bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularizes terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.

Faraday ultimately becomes the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a lifetime position.

Faraday is an excellent experimentalist who conveys his ideas in clear and simple language; his mathematical abilities, however, do not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra.

Maxwell took the work of Faraday and others, and summarized it in a set of equations that is accepted as the basis of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.

On Faraday's uses of the lines of force, Maxwell wrote that they show Faraday "to have been in reality a mathematician of a very high order – one from whom the mathematicians of the future may derive valuable and fertile methods."

(The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell Volume 1 page 360; Courier Dover 2003, ISBN 0-486-49560-4) It is said that Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside the picture of Isaac Newton and a photograph of James Clerk Maxwell.

("Einstein's Heroes: Imagining the World through the Language of Mathematics", by Robyn Arianrhod UQP, reviewed by Jane Gleeson-White, 10 November 2003, The Sydney Morning Herald.)

The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named in his honor.

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