ABSTRACT
The story of how Michael Faraday, bom the son of a blacksmith on 22 September 1791 and later apprenticed to a bookbinder, came to be one of history’s greatest scientists, is so remarkable that in a work of fiction it could be taken as pure fantasy Let us therefore begin this account of Faraday’s life and work in his own words The facade of the Royal Institution after the addition of columns in 1838. Watercolour drawing by T Hosmar Shepherd https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781003063094/279d7dd9-7e21-43fe-922e-8f1f3058ee16/content/fig0002.jpg"/> The house where Faraday grew up in Jacob’s Well Mews https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781003063094/279d7dd9-7e21-43fe-922e-8f1f3058ee16/content/fig0003.jpg"/> 2 with the brief outline of his first encounter with Fĭumphry Davy, and arrival at the Royal Institution, where he was to spend the remainder of his working life. Just after Davy’s death in 1829, when he had already been at the Royal Institution for sixteen years, he replied to an enquiry from John Ayrton Paris, the first biographer of Humphry Davy, as to how he first met Davy.
When I was a bookseller’s apprentice, I was very fond of experiment and very averse to trade. It happened that a gentleman, a member of the Royal Institution, took me to hear some of Sir H. Davy’s last lectures in Albemarle Street. I took notes, and afterwards wrote them out more fairly in a quarto volume.
My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of Science, which 3I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in his way, he would favour my views. At the same time, I sent the notes I had taken of his lectures. Early in 1813 he requested to see me, and told me of the situation of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, then just vacant.
At the same time that he thus gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he still advised me not to give up the prospects I had before me, telling me that Science was a harsh mistress and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service. He smiled at my notion of the superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and said he would leave me to the experience of a few years to set me right on that matter.
Finally, through his good efforts I went to the Royal Institution early in March of 1813, as assistant in the laboratory and, in October of the same year, went with him abroad as his assistant in experiment and in writing. I returned with him in April 1815, resumed my station in the Royal Institution, and have, as you know, ever since remained there.
