Pearce Williams writes [ 1 ] :- It records the first conversion of electrical into mechanical energy. It also contained the first notion of the line of force. It is Faraday's work on electricity which has prompted us to add him to this archive. However we must note that Faraday was in no sense a mathematician and almost all his biographers describe him as "mathematically illiterate". He never learnt any mathematics and his contributions to electricity were purely that of an experimentalist.
Why then include him in an archive of mathematicians? Well, it was Faraday's work which led to deep mathematical theories of electricity and magnetism. In particular the remarkable mathematical theories on the topic developed by Maxwell would not have been possible without Faraday's discovery of various laws. This is a point which Maxwell himself stressed on a number of occasions. In the ten years from to Faraday again undertook research on chemistry.
His two most important pieces of work on chemistry during that period was liquefying chlorine in and isolating benzene in Between these dates, in , he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
This was a difficult time for Faraday since Davy was at this time President of the Royal Society and could not see the man whom he still thought of as his assistant as becoming a Fellow.
Although Davy opposed his election, he was over-ruled by the other Fellows. Faraday never held the incident against Davy, always holding him in the highest regard. Faraday introduced a series of six Christmas lectures for children at the Royal Institution in In Faraday returned to his work on electricity and made what is arguably his most important discovery, namely that of electro-magnetic induction. This discovery was the opposite of that which he had made ten years earlier. He showed that a magnet could induce an electrical current in a wire.
Thus he was able to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy and discover the first dynamo. Again he made lines of force central to his thinking. He published his first paper in what was to become a series on Experimental researches on electricity in He read the paper before the Royal Society on 24 November of that year. In Faraday began to receive honours for his major contributions to science. In that year he received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford.
In he was made a Member of the Senate of the University of London, which was a Crown appointment. During this period, beginning in , Faraday made important discoveries in electrochemistry. While travelling from laboratory to laboratory across Europe, Faraday got the opportunity to perform experiments and attend lectures and in this process he received the education he had never had.
By all means the trip had profound influence on Faraday. He gained a working knowledge of French and Italian; he had added considerably to his scientific attainments, and had met and talked with many of the leading foreign men of science; but, above all, the tour had been what was most valuable to him at that time, a broadening influence. On his return to London, in , Faraday was re-engaged at the Royal Institution as an assistant. His duties mainly involved with chemical experiments in the laboratory.
He also began lecturing on chemistry topics at the Philosophical Society. He published his first paper in on caustic lime from Tuscany. It was sent to Davy by the Duchess of Montrose. As his chemical capabilities increased, he was given more responsibility. In he replaced the seriously ailing Davy in his duties directing the laboratory at the Royal Institution. In he was appointed to the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry — a special Chair created for him.
Faraday made numerous discoveries both in chemistry and physics. His research work was of highly technical nature. To understand his discoveries satisfactorily one would require a detailed knowledge of chemistry and physics. Among the most important discoveries of Faraday were discovery of benzene, magneto-electric induction, laws of electro-chemical decomposition, the magnetization of light and diamagnetism.
His only original book Chemical Manipulation appeared in He made new chemical compounds. In he made the first steel alloy. In , Faraday was the first to liquefy a gas, chlorine. In he discovered benzene C6H6 while examining the residue collecting in cylinders of illuminating gas.
It was Faraday who synthesised the first chlorocarbons. Faraday was one of the best chemical analysts of his time. Although Faraday began his scientific career as a chemist, he also became intrigued by the nature of electricity and magnetism which began to be recognized as different aspects of a single phenomenon at the beginning of the s.
In Hans Christian Oersted had discovered the first link between electricity and magnetism. Oersted found that when a magnetic compass is held near a wire that carries an electric current the needle of the compass which is a tiny bar magnet is always deflected to a point at right angles to the wire.
The experiment implied that an electric current produces a magnetic force that influences the compass needle. This was the first primitive electric motor. Unfortunately this experiment triggered off a rift between Faraday and his mentor Davy that was never healed. Davy thought that Faraday had overheard a discussion between Davy and William Hyde Wollaston Faraday admitted that he may have gotten a start from the discussion between Davy and Wollaston but his apparatus was substantially different and the effect demonstrated by Faraday was completely different from the effect predicted by Wollaston.
History has put its stamp on the originality of Faraday. After discovering the electromagnetic rotation Faraday wanted to convert magnetism into electricity that is the reverse of what Oersted did—electricity was converted into magnetism.
In Faraday demonstrated that when a magnet is moved past a wire, or pushed into the mount of coil of wire while the magnet is moving it creates an electric current in the wire. This discovery formed the basis of the electricity generator or dynamo, in which electricity is produced by rotating magnets that move swiftly past coils of wire. Faraday found that by combining mechanical motion with magnetism he could produce electric current. He detected the presence of electric current when he moved the coil of wire over the magnet but when he let the magnet just sit motionless inside the coil of wire there was no electric current.
This was the principle of electromagnetic induction or the basic principle of electric generator or dynamo. Joseph Henry , an American physicist, had also come up with an excellent demonstration of this idea. However, he never published it. On the other hand, Faraday pursued his work with extraordinary single-mindedness and got the credit for its discovery. It is said that the then British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel after seeing a demonstration of the dynamo effect asked Faraday what use the discovery was.
Rather he became deeply interested in understanding how electricity and magnetism are related to each other. It was Faraday who showed that the various types of electricity — static, voltaic, animal and thermoelectric — were the same.
In , he formulated his famous laws of electrolysis which govern all that happen in electrochemical technology and industry. Since his childhood Faraday had a profound belief in the inter- connection and unity of natural forces and phenomena.
He thought that his field theory and his findings on the interrelatedness of magnetism, electricity and motion contributed to his vision of unity of natural forces and phenomena. In spite of the technical nature of his research work Faraday was remarkably gifted as an expounder of science to popular audience. These evening meetings grew into an institution in their own rights, the Friday Evening Discourses. These Discourses reported the latest developments in science to a general audience, who were required to pay a certain fee for attending the discourses.
Faraday often turned out to be the speaker in those discourses. Between and , when he retired, Faraday gave more than a hundred of the Friday lectures. The tradition continues to this day. From a painting by Harriet Moore. Faraday is most famous for his contributions to the understanding of electricity and electrochemistry. In this work he was driven by his belief in the uniformity of nature and the interconvertibility of various forces, which he conceived early on as fields of force.
In he succeeded in producing mechanical motion by means of a permanent magnet and an electric current—an ancestor of the electric motor. From Punch , July 21, In the course of proving that electricities produced by various means are identical, Faraday discovered the two laws of electrolysis: the amount of chemical change or decomposition is exactly proportional to the quantity of electricity that passes in solution, and the amounts of different substances deposited or dissolved by the same quantity of electricity are proportional to their chemical equivalent weights.
His discovery of electro-magnetic induction in commenced a remarkable decade of work. Amongst other things, he rewrote the theory of electrochemistry coining many words still in use today such as electrode and ion and established his laws of electrolysis.
In he built the Faraday cage, which showed that measurements of electric charge depended on the electrical state of the observer. This observation led Faraday to develop his theory that electricity was the result of varying magnetic forces between particles rather than a fluid as previously supposed. In the s Faraday argued against two major theories of 19th-century physics - that matter was ultimately divisible into chemical atoms, and that light travelled by flowing through a substance called the aether.
Looking for alternative explanations helped him towards his discovery of the magneto-optical effect and diamagnetism in and culminated in his establishment of the field theory of electromagnetism which, when mathematised by William Thomson later Lord Kelvin and James Clark Maxwell, became and remains one of the cornerstones of physics.
As one of the leading members of the scientific community, he was frequently invited to provide scientific advice to the state, working for departments such as the Home Office, Admiralty and Board of Trade. Furthermore, between and he was scientific adviser to Trinity House, the English and Welsh lighthouse authority. As a result of all this Prince Albert arranged for Faraday to have the use of a Grace and Favour house at Hampton Court from onwards.
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