Michael Faraday
British physicist (and chemist) known for many important contributions to the theory of electricity and magnetism, among others. He taught himself without much education and became a great scientist; he is a rare example that a man without much knowledge of mathematics can be a great physicist. He was also good at giving popular lectures; in fact, he was greatly responsible for creating the good tradition of "Friday Evening Discourses" and "Christmas Lectures" (for children) of the Royal Institution.
[Faraday's Diary, vol. 1; pages around September 4, 1821. Photo by S. Uchii.]
His name became known to the European scientific world by his discovery of "electromagnetic rotations" (1821), the discovery that electromagnetic energy can be converted to mechanical work (for the process he came to this view, see Faraday's Diary, Vol. I, 49-63). The device he invented for showing this is schematically illustrated as follows:
[Drawing by S. Uchii]
However, he had to pay a rather high price for this discovery, since he was charged of plagiarism by some people, including his mentor Humphry Davy. W. H. Wollaston was working on a similar problem, but Faraday hastened to publish his result without consulting Wollaston. Faraday's result was not in fact plagiarism, but he was not careful enough, as he later regretted. Beginning with this incident, his relationship with Davy became unpleasant, eventually leading to Davy's opposition against Faraday's fellowship of Royal Society. This incident, as well as many other incidents and works, is well documented in L. Pearce Williams' valuable book, Michael Faraday (1965).
Faraday belonged to a small religious group called "Glasites" or "Sandamanians", and there are intriguing questions of how his religious view and scientific view were compatible within himself, and of how his religious view affected his scientific activities. G. Cantor's fine work, Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist (1991), examines this aspect of Faraday's life.
See also Faraday and Royal Institution; Faraday and Henry [Japanese]
