Although he was primarily known as a chemist, Michael Faraday’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, Faraday was completely self-educated. After an apprenticeship to a bookbinder allowed him to spend seven years reading about science, Faraday 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, Faraday 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.
