Faraday as a Discoverer
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Publisher Description
This is a biography of Faraday, the famous British chemist, written by one of his collaborators in the 1880s. Oersted, in 1820, discovered the action of a voltaic current on a magnetic needle; and immediately afterwards the splendid intellect of Ampere succeeded in showing that every magnetic phenomenon then known might be reduced to the mutual action of electric currents. The subject occupied all men's thoughts: and in this country Dr. Wollaston sought to convert the deflection of the needle by the current into a permanent rotation of the needle round the current. He also hoped to produce the reciprocal effect of causing a current to rotate round a magnet. In the early part of 1821, Wollaston attempted to realise this idea in the presence of Sir Humphry Davy in the laboratory of the Royal Institution.
Customer Reviews
Inspiring portrait of a humble giant of science
In an age when we have forgotten even to take for granted the convenience of flicking a switch to enjoy power and light and stopped wondering at the miracle of the LCD display technology around us, it is easy to forget that once the science behind these and many more marvels was once a mystery.
Tyndall's scientific biography is that - an account of the hero's journey for one of history's great discoverers, rather than a human-interest story - yet it is vivid and engaging partly because of the affection that bound together Tyndall and Faraday over decades that yielded astonishing fresh insight into the physical world. Like Faraday, Tyndall had a gift for making complex, abstract ideas accessible to lay audiences and he is also a master storyteller, steering a clear course through the professional life of a great scientist whose interests wandered widely.
Many of us think of the Victorians as stuffy and remote. Don't be put off by the age of this book. It is accessible as anything written in popular science today and will transport you to a time when our modern understanding of the universe began to unfold in the hands of a true master experimenter.