Michael Faraday was a British physicist and chemist who is often regarded as the greatest experimental scientist of the 1800s. His many contributions to the study of electricity include the invention of the electric motor, electric generator, and transformer, as well as the discovery of electromagnetic induction, the laws of electrolysis, the discovery of benzene, and the theory that the plane of polarization of light is rotated in an electric field.
Faraday was born in 1791 in rural England, but his family moved to London shortly thereafter. One of ten children and the son of a blacksmith, Faraday received a minimal education and became apprenticed to a bookbinder at age 14. He was fascinated by articles on electricity and chemistry and was fortunate to have an employer who allowed him to read books and attend scientific lectures. He received some education in science from the City Philosophical Society.
When Faraday finished his apprenticeship in 1812, he expected to devote himself to bookbinding rather than to science. That same year, Faraday attended a lecture by Humphry Davy, who made many contributions in the field of heat and thermodynamics. Faraday sent 386 pages of notes, bound in leather, to Davy; Davy was impressed and appointed Faraday his permanent assistant at the Royal Institution. Faraday toured France and Italy from 1813 to 1815 with Davy, visiting leading scientists of the time such as Volta and Vauquelin.
Despite his limited mathematical ability, Faraday succeeded in making the basic discoveries on which virtually all our uses of electricity depend. He conceived the fundamental nature of magnetism and, to a degree, that of electricity and light.
A modest man who was content to serve science as best he could, Faraday declined a knighthood and an offer to become president of the Royal Society. He was also a moral man; he refused to take part in the preparation of poison gas for use in the Crimean War.
Faraday died in 1867. His many achievements are recognized by the use of his name. The Faraday constant is the quantity of electricity required to deliver a standard amount of substance in electrolysis, and the SI unit of capacitance is the farad.