Faraday: The Life
by
Michael Faraday is one of the giants of the history of science. A self-made, self-educated man, his public life was underpinned by his devout membership of a small Christian sect, whose rigid attitudes shadowed him at every turn, culminating in crises that tested his resolve as a scientist, his faith as a christian and even the balance of his mind. Yet he became the greatest scientist of his day,and the central figure of an extraordinary scientific renaissance in London. At the age of twenty-one Faraday secured a position as laboratory assistant to Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. He rapidly overtook Davy as Britain’s most celebrated scientist, and his work at the Institution as a gifted experimenter and inspiring lecturer gave unprecedented impetus to public understanding of science over the course of nearly half a century.
Faraday: the life captures the excitement of the explosive mixture of scientific and other cultural activity in London during the first half of the nineteenth century, and radically reshapes our perceptions not only of Michael Faraday, but of the interaction of arts, sciences and education at the dawn of the modern age.
Faraday: the life captures the excitement of the explosive mixture of scientific and other cultural activity in London during the first half of the nineteenth century, and radically reshapes our perceptions not only of Michael Faraday, but of the interaction of arts, sciences and education at the dawn of the modern age.