Born: 22 September 1791 (Newington Butts, England)

Died: 25 August 1867 (aged 75)

Hampton Court, Middlesex, England

Residence: United Kingdom

Nationality: British
Fields Physics
Chemistry
Institutions: Royal Institution
Known for: Faraday's law of induction
Electrochemistry
Faraday effect
Faraday cage
Faraday constant
Faraday cup
Faraday's laws of electrolysis
Faraday paradox
Faraday rotator
Faraday-efficiency effect
Faraday wave
Faraday wheel
Lines of force
Influences: Humphry Davy
William Thomas Brande
Notable Royal Medal (1835 and 1846)
awards: Copley Medal (1832 and 1838)
Rumford Medal (1846)
Albert Medal (1866)
Albert Einstein Biography
Michael Faraday was born on 22 September 1791 in south London. His family
was not well off and Faraday received only a basic formal education. When he
was 14, he was apprenticed to a local bookbinder and during the next seven
years, educated himself by reading books on a wide range of scientific subjects.
In 1812, Faraday attended four lectures given by the chemist Humphry Davy at
the Royal Institution. Faraday subsequently wrote to Davy asking for a job as his
assistant. Davy turned him down but in 1813 appointed him to the job of
chemical assistant at the Royal Institution.

A year later, Faraday was invited to accompany Davy and his wife on an 18
month European tour, taking in France, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium and
meeting many influential scientists. On their return in 1815, Faraday continued to
work at the Royal Institution, helping with experiments for Davy and other
scientists. In 1821 he published his work on electromagnetic rotation (the
principle behind the electric motor). He was able to carry out little further
research in the 1820s, busy as he was with other projects. In 1826, he founded
the Royal Institution's Friday Evening Discourses and in the same year the
Christmas Lectures, both of which continue to this day. He himself gave many
lectures, establishing his reputation as the outstanding scientific lecturer of his
time.

In 1831, Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, the principle behind

the electric transformer and generator. This discovery was crucial in allowing
electricity to be transformed from a curiosity into a powerful new technology.
During the remainder of the decade he worked on developing his ideas about
electricity. He was partly responsible for coining many familiar words including
'electrode', 'cathode' and 'ion'. Faraday's scientific knowledge was harnessed
for practical use through various official appointments, including scientific
adviser to Trinity House (1836-1865) and Professor of Chemistry at the Royal
Military Academy in Woolwich (1830-1851).

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.

However, in the early 1840s, Faraday's health began to deteriorate and he did
less research. He died on 25 August 1867 at Hampton Court, where he had been
given official lodgings in recognition of his contribution to science. He gave his
name to the 'farad', originally describing a unit of electrical charge but later a
unit of electrical capacitance.
Personal Life
The wedding bells for Michael Faraday rang on June 12, 1821. His significant other,
Sarah Barnard, was the daughter of the Sandemanian silversmith, Edward
Barnard. The couple first met through their families at the Sandemanian church.
One month post marriage, Faraday confessed his faith to the Sandemanian
congregation. He served as deacon and for two terms, as an elder in the meeting
house of his youth. His church was located at Paul's Alley in the Barbican. Later, in
1862, the meeting house was relocated to Barnsbury Grove, Islington which was
where Faraday served the final two years of his second term as elder before
resigning from that post

Early Life
Born in Newington Butts (today a part of the London Borough of Southwark),
Michael Faraday did not come from a very affluent family. His father, James was
a member of the Glassite sect of Christianity. Professionally, James was an
apprentice to the village blacksmith. Third of the four children, young Michael
Faraday received only basic education. In 1804, he served as an errand boy for
the bookseller George Riebau, delivering newspapers among other things, who a
year later, indentured Faraday for a period of seven years. It was during these
seven years of apprenticeship that Faraday read many books, two amongst
which that captured his attention like none others were Isaac Watts', The
Improvement of the Mind and Jane Marcet’s, Conversations on Chemistry. Not
only did this reading activity improve his knowledge and understanding, it also
determined his course of life. Faraday’s keen interest in science, especially in
electricity, was developed herein.

In 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship Faraday was presented tickets to attend
four lectures to be delivered by the eminent professor of chemistry, Humphry Davy
and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society, at the Royal Institution,
by William Dance, who was a regular customer at Riebau’s and one of the
founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Faraday, in an attempt to thank Davy,
sent him a three-hundred pages book which contained notes taken during the
lecture. Later, Faraday bagged a temporary job as a secretary to Davy, when
the latter damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride. In March
1813, Davy appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution, after
John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was sacked.

Things, however, weren’t as smooth for Faraday later as they were until then. In
the long tour that Davy had set out on, from 1813 until 1815, his valet did not
accompany him. As such, Faraday had to fill up for this vacancy. While the tour
did open for Faraday the doors to the scientific elite of Europe and exposed him
to a host of stimulating ideas, the journey wasn’t a very pleasant one. Biased by
classism, Davy’s wife refused to treat Faraday as an equal and made life hell for
Faraday, who, worn out by the torture, even thought of giving up on science
altogether. In the year 1821, Faraday was appointed as the acting
superintendent of the house of the Royal Institution.
Later Life
At the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Faraday was elected a member of the
Royal Society in 1824. The next year, he was appointed director of the laboratory.
Later in 1833, Faraday was bestowed upon with the position, Fullerian Professor of
Chemistry, which he was appointed for life. Apart from the scientific researches
that Faraday undertook at the Royal Institution, he also worked at numerous other
projects given to him by private enterprises and the British government. Faraday
spent a considerable amount of time in the construction and operation of light
houses. He was also active in what is today known as environmental science.
While he aided with the planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition
of 1851 in London, Faraday was also involved in advising the National Gallery on
the cleaning and protection of its art collection.

Michael Faraday was deeply involved in the education sector as well. His series
of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution is still
regarded as one of the earliest Christmas lectures for young minds, a practice
that is still prevalent today. Faraday is known to have given Christmas lectures for
a record nineteen times between 1827 and 1860. For this accomplishment, the
University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary) in
June 1832. In1838, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences and later in 1844, Faraday became one of eight foreign
members elected to the French Academy of Sciences. Meanwhile, in his life,
Faraday declined the offer of a knighthood and twice refused the post of the
President of the Royal Society which was offered to him. In 1848, Michael Faraday
was honoured a grace and favour house in Hampton Court in Middlesex, free of
all expenses or upkeep, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort. Ten
years later, he retired and lived there.
Michael Faraday’s Scientific Achievements, Discoveries and
Inventions
1. Discovery of Electromagnetic Rotation- This is a glimpse of what would
eventually develop into the electric motor, based on Hans Christian
Oersted’s discovery that a wire carrying electric current has magnetic
properties.
2. Gas Liquefaction and Refrigeration- The importance of Faraday’s
discovery was that he had shown that mechanical pumps could
transform a gas at room temperature into a liquid. The liquid could then
be evaporated, cooling its surroundings and the resulting gas could be
collected and compressed by a pump into a liquid again, then the whole
cycle could be repeated. This is the basis of how modern refrigerators and
freezers work.
3. Discovery of Benzene- Historically, benzene is one of the most important
substances in chemistry, both in a practical sense – i.e. making new
materials; and in a theoretical sense – i.e. understanding chemical
bonding. Michael Faraday discovered benzene in the oily residue left
behind from producing gas for lighting in London.
4. Discovery of Electromagnetic Induction- This was an enormously important
discovery for the future of both science and technology. Faraday
discovered that a varying magnetic field causes electricity to flow in an
electric circuit.
5. Faraday’s Laws of Electrolysis- Faraday was one of the major players in the
founding of the new science of electrochemistry. This is the science of
understanding what happens at the interface of an electrode with an
ionic substance. Electrochemistry is the science that has produced the Li
ion batteries and metal hydride batteries capable of powering modern
mobile technology. Faraday’s laws are vital to our understanding of
electrode reactions.
6. Invention of the Faraday Cage- Faraday discovered that when an
electrical conductor becomes charged, all of the extra charge sits on the
outside of the conductor. This means that the extra charge does not
appear on the inside of a room or cage made of metal.
7. Discovery of the Faraday Effect – a magneto-optical effect- This was
another vital experiment in the history of science, the first to link
electromagnetism and light – a link finally described fully by James Clerk
Maxwell’s equations in 1864, which established that light is an
electromagnetic wave.
8. Magnetism- This device is known as a homopolar motor. These
experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern
electromagnetic technology.
9. Faraday's first dynamo- This was the first transformer (inductor), although
Faraday used it only to demonstrate the principle of electromagnetic
induction and did not realise what it would eventualybe used for.
10. Faraday’s first electric generator- This design was inefficient due to self-
cancelling counterflows of current in regions not under the influence of
the magnetic field. While current flow was induced directly underneath
the magnet, the current would circulate backwards in regions outside the
 influence of the magnetic field. This counterflow limits the power output to
the pickup wires, and induces waste heating of the copper disc.
11. Farady's disk- This apparatus can be considered to be the first dynamo
ever made, capable of producing electricity by making a copper disk
spin between two magnets. It was made and used in several experiments
by Michael Faraday around the 1850's.
12. Faraday law of electrolysis- the quantity of elements separated by
passing an electrical current through a molten or dissolved salt was
proportional to the quantity of current passed through the circuit. This
became the basis of the first law of electrolysis. He also popularized
terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
13. Faraday effect- the plane of polarization of linearly polarized light
propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the
application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation
direction.
14. Diamagnetism- a very weak form of magnetism that is only exhibited in
the presence of an external magnetic field. This phenomenon can can be
used for levitation.
15. Faraday cage- a practical application of the effect demonstrated in
school as the Faraday ice-pail experiment. If an ice pail, or any other
hollow conductor is given a charge on its inside, then the charge will
spread all over the outside surface of the conductor in such a way as to
produce no electric field inside.