Faraday made such an impression on Davy that when the latter was asked about his greatest discovery, Davy answered: “My greatest discovery was Michael Faraday”. Faraday was hired the 1st of marcha 1813 as Humphry Davy’s laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution in London, where he was elected a member in 1824 and where he worked until his death in 1867, first as Davy’s assistant, then as his collaborator, and finally, after Davy’s death, as his succesor. His passion for science was awakened by the description of electricity he read in a copy of the Encyclopædia Britannica he was binding, after which he started experimenting in an improvised laboratory. He left school when he was thirteen and started working in a bookbinding shop. The only basic formal education he received was in reading, writing and arithmetic as a child. Michael Faraday was born in South London to a humble family. He explained electrolysis in terms of electrical forces and also introduced concepts such as field and lines of force, which not only were fundamental to understanding electrical and magnetic interactions but also formed the basis of further advances in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, which led to the invention of the dynamo, the forerunner to the electric generator. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) / Credits: Wikipediaįaraday’s case is not common in the history of physics: although his training was very basic, the laws of electricity and magnetism are due much more to Faraday’s experimental discoveries than to any other scientist. The following year, in May 1846, Faraday published the article Thoughts on Ray Vibrations, a prophetic publication in which he speculated that light could be a vibration of the electric and magnetic lines of force. This was one of the first indications that electromagnetism and light were related. To be precise, he found that the plane of vibration of a beam of linearly polarized light incident on a piece of glass rotated when a magnetic field was applied in the direction of propagation of the beam. In 1845, just 170 years ago, Faraday discovered that a magnetic field influenced polarized light – a phenomenon known as the magneto-optical effect or Faraday effect. But perhaps it is not so well known that he also made fundamental contributions to the electromagnetic theory of light. Michael Faraday (22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) is probably best known for his discovery of electromagnetic induction, his contributions to electrical engineering and electrochemistry or due to the fact that he was responsible for introducing the concept of field in physics to describe electromagnetic interaction.
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