A Life of Discovery; Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution

New York: Random House, 2002. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. xxii, [2], 465. [5] pages. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. James Hamilton was University Curator at the University of Birmingham 1992-2013, and is currently Senior Research Fellow and Hon Reader at the University of Birmingham. He was Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, 1998/99. Michael Faraday is one of the giants of the history of science. A self-made, self-educated man, his public life was underpinned by his devout membership of a small Christian sect, whose rigid attitudes shadowed him at every turn, culminating in a crisis that tested his resolve as a scientist, his faith as a Christian and even the balance of his mind. Yet he became the greatest scientist of his day, and the central figure of an extraordinary scientific renaissance in London. At the age of 21 Faraday secured a position as laboratory assistant to Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. He rapidly overtook Davy as Britain's most celebrated scientist, and his work at the Institution as a gifted experimenter and inspiring lecturer gave unprecedented impetus to public understanding of science over the course of nearly half a century. Faraday - The Life captures the excitement of the explosive mixture of scientific and other cultural activity in London during the first half of the nineteenth century, and radically reshapes our perceptions not only of Michael Faraday, but of the interaction of arts, sciences and education at the dawn of the modern age. Michael Faraday FRS (22 September 1791 - 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. Although Faraday received little formal education, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. He similarly discovered the principles of electromagnetic induction and diamagnetism, and the laws of electrolysis. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology. As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the Bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as "anode", "cathode", "electrode" and "ion". Faraday ultimately became the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a lifetime position. Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language; his mathematical abilities, however, did not extend as far as trigonometry and were limited to the simplest algebra. James Clerk Maxwell took the work of Faraday and others and summarized it in a set of equations which is accepted as the basis of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena. On Faraday's uses of 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 SI unit of capacitance is named in his honour: the farad. Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell. Physicist Ernest Rutherford stated, "When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.