Key Takeaways:
- Michael Faraday, despite his initial background as a chemist, made significant contributions to the understanding of electricity and magnetism.
- Faraday's self-education, beginning with an apprenticeship as a bookbinder, laid the groundwork for his scientific career.
- His inventions included the electric generator, transformer, and motor, showcasing his practical application of electromagnetic principles.
- Faraday pioneered the conceptualization of the relationship between electromagnetism and light, and introduced the concept of magnetic field lines.
Although he was primarily known as a chemist, Michael Farraday’s research into electricity and magnetism underpin much of our understanding of the universe and modern physics. Born Sept. 22, 1791, into a lower-class British family, Farraday was completely self-educated. After an apprenticeship to a bookbinder allowed him to spend seven years reading about science, Farraday secured an assistantship with chemist Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution, and went on to become the laboratory director and a professor of chemistry. In addition to inventing the electrical generator, the electric transformer, and the electric motor, Farraday demonstrated the relationship between electricity and magnetism. He was the first to propose the relationship between electromagnetism and light, including that magnetism influences light, and also introduced the concept of magnetic field lines.
