Michael Faraday — The Self-Taught Genius Who Gave the World Electricity

A Blacksmith's Son

Michael Faraday was born on 22 September 1791 in Newington Butts, Surrey (now part of South London), to James Faraday, a blacksmith, and Margaret Hastwell. The family was poor — James Faraday was frequently ill and unable to work steadily. Michael was one of four children who were often hungry. The family belonged to the Sandemanian sect of the Christian church, a small, strict denomination that demanded literal interpretation of the Bible and rejected the accumulation of worldly wealth. This faith would shape Faraday's character and decisions throughout his life.

Faraday later recalled being given one loaf of bread that had to last him a week. His mother, Margaret, was described by contemporaries as a woman of "great calm and wisdom" who supported her son emotionally through a difficult childhood. The Sandemanian faith — described by biographers as "the single most important influence upon him" — shaped how he approached and interpreted nature throughout his life.

Faraday received only the most basic education — reading, writing, and arithmetic — at a local Sunday school. At age thirteen, he began work as an errand boy and newspaper delivery boy for George Riebau, a bookbinder and bookseller. In 1805, at fourteen, he was formally apprenticed to Riebau for seven years.

The Bookbinder Who Read the Books

Unlike other apprentices, Faraday read the books that came in for binding. The article on electricity in the third edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica particularly fascinated him. He also devoured Jane Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry, a popular science book written specifically for young readers. Using old bottles, lumber, and wire, he built a crude electrostatic generator and a weak voltaic pile, conducting simple experiments in electrochemistry on his own.

A French émigré artist who lodged above the bookshop befriended the boy and gave him lessons in perspective drawing — a skill that would later prove invaluable for his meticulous scientific illustrations and lecture diagrams.

Among the books that shaped him was Isaac Watts's The Improvement of the Mind, whose principles for self-education Faraday enthusiastically implemented. He also attended lectures and discussions at the City Philosophical Society, where young Londoners gathered to hear talks on scientific topics. Between 1816 and 1818, Faraday himself delivered chemistry lectures at the Society to refine his lecturing skills — the only lectures he ever gave outside the Royal Institution.

Attending Davy's Lectures

In 1812, one of Riebau's customers gave Faraday free tickets to attend four chemistry lectures by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. Faraday took beautiful, detailed notes — 300 pages — illustrated with the kind of precision he had learned from the French artist, and bound them into a book.

At twenty-one, with his apprenticeship ending, Faraday wrote to Davy enclosing his bound lecture notes and asking whether any position, "however lowly," might be available at the Royal Institution. Davy was impressed but had no vacancy. Shortly after, when Davy was temporarily blinded by an explosion in the laboratory, he hired Faraday to assist him. In March 1813, a permanent position opened as chemical assistant, and Faraday was appointed. He was twenty-one years old.

The Continental Tour with Davy

In October 1813, Davy invited Faraday to accompany him on an eighteen-month tour of European scientific centres, serving as both scientific assistant and valet. Davy treated Faraday as an intellectual equal, but Lady Davy regarded him as nothing more than a servant — an experience Faraday found humiliating.

Despite this, the tour was transformative. Faraday met leading scientists including André-Marie Ampère in Paris and Alessandro Volta in Milan. In Florence, he and Davy conducted experiments burning diamonds in oxygen. By the time they returned to London in April 1815, the twenty-three-year-old Faraday had been exposed to the cutting edge of European science.

Early Chemical Work

Back at the Royal Institution, Faraday continued assisting Davy and other scientists while developing his own research programme. He studied chlorine, discovering two new compounds of chlorine and carbon. He conducted early experiments on the diffusion of gases. He succeeded in liquefying several gases previously believed to be "permanent" — including chlorine, ammonia, and carbon dioxide — proving that with sufficient pressure and cooling, all gases could be condensed into liquids.

On 12 June 1821, Faraday married Sarah Barnard, daughter of a Sandemanian elder. The couple had no children. They lived at the Royal Institution for most of their married life, in quarters provided above the laboratory.

Nanoparticles — A Discovery Ahead of Its Time (1857)

In 1857, Faraday reported that gold colloids — tiny particles of gold suspended in liquid — have different optical properties from bulk gold metal. This was likely the first observation of what are now known as quantum size effects, and is considered by many historians of science to mark the birth of nanoscience. The discovery was so far ahead of its time that its significance was not fully appreciated until the late 20th century.

The Induction Ring

On 29 August 1831, Faraday made what is arguably the most consequential experimental discovery in the history of technology. Using an iron ring wrapped with two separate coils of insulated wire, he connected one coil to a battery and the other to a galvanometer. When he closed the battery circuit, the galvanometer needle momentarily deflected — then returned to zero. When he opened the circuit, the needle deflected again, in the opposite direction.

He had induced an electric current in the second coil through the electromagnetic effect of the current in the first — without any direct electrical connection between them. This was electromagnetic induction. The iron ring was the first electric transformer.

The First Dynamo

Over the following weeks, Faraday devised variations and extensions. In his most famous experiment, he attached two wires through a sliding contact to a copper disc and rotated the disc between the poles of a horseshoe magnet. The result was a continuous flowing electric current — the first dynamo (the "Faraday disc").

Previously, the only way to produce electric current was with a chemical battery. Now Faraday had shown that mechanical motion could be converted into electricity. This single discovery is the basis of the entire electrical power industry. Every coal, gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, and wind power station on Earth generates electricity using the principle Faraday demonstrated in 1831.

Faraday's Law of Induction

Faraday formalised his discovery as Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction: the electromotive force induced in a circuit is proportional to the rate of change of the magnetic flux through the circuit. This became the third of Maxwell's four equations of electromagnetism. It is the fundamental operating principle of all transformers, inductors, and most types of electrical motors and generators.

A New Way of Seeing

Faraday's most profound contribution to physics was not a single experiment but a new way of thinking about forces. He proposed that electric and magnetic effects are not instantaneous actions at a distance between particles (as Newton had conceived gravity) but rather are transmitted through the space surrounding charged or magnetised objects via invisible "lines of force."

He visualised these lines spreading outward from magnets and current-carrying wires, filling space with a physical entity — what we now call the electromagnetic field. This was a radical departure from the dominant Newtonian view that forces act instantaneously across empty space.

The Faraday Effect (1845)

In 1845, Faraday demonstrated that a strong magnetic field can rotate the plane of polarisation of a light beam passing through glass. This "Faraday effect" was the first experimental evidence that light and magnetism are related — a connection that Maxwell would later prove mathematically by showing that light is an electromagnetic wave.

Faraday also discovered diamagnetism in 1845 — the property by which certain materials are weakly repelled by a magnetic field. He demonstrated that all materials respond to magnetic fields, not just iron, nickel, and cobalt.

The Foundation Maxwell Built Upon

Faraday lacked the mathematical training to express his ideas in equations. But James Clerk Maxwell, reading Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity, recognised the profound physical insight behind the "lines of force" concept.

"Faraday showed himself to have been in reality a mathematician of a very high order — one from whom the mathematicians of the future may derive valuable and fertile methods."

— James Clerk Maxwell

Maxwell translated Faraday's physical intuitions into precise mathematical form — his four equations of electromagnetism. As Maxwell freely admitted, "the basic ideas for his mathematical theory of electrical and magnetic fields came from Faraday." Without Faraday's experimental discoveries and conceptual framework, Maxwell's equations could not have been written.

The Haswell Colliery Investigation

In 1846, Faraday and the geologist Charles Lyell conducted a forensic investigation into a catastrophic explosion at the Haswell Colliery in County Durham, which killed 95 miners. Their detailed report was groundbreaking: it demonstrated for the first time that coal dust contributed to the severity of mine explosions and showed how improved ventilation could have prevented the disaster. Faraday gave a public demonstration of how ventilation systems work during a lecture. Tragically, the coal industry ignored this warning for over 60 years, until the 1913 Senghenydd Colliery disaster killed 439 miners.

Refusing Chemical Weapons

When the British government asked Faraday to advise on the production of chemical weapons for use in the Crimean War (1853–1856), he flatly refused, citing ethical reasons. This principled stand — from a man who had spent decades serving the government as scientific adviser to the Admiralty and Trinity House — demonstrated that his moral convictions were as firm as his scientific ones.

Debunking Table-Turning and Mesmerism

Faraday also took a public stand against pseudoscience. When table-turning, mesmerism, and seances became fashionable in Victorian Britain, he investigated the phenomena experimentally and published his findings, showing that the movements were caused by unconscious muscular action (the ideomotor effect), not supernatural forces. He used these episodes to criticise both the public's credulity and the nation's educational system for failing to teach critical thinking.

Adviser to Industry, Art, and the Great Exhibition

Beyond his scientific research, Faraday undertook extensive public service. His workshop at Trinity Buoy Wharf, where he conducted the first experiments in electric lighting for lighthouses, still stands today.

He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and air pollution at the Royal Mint. Faraday assisted with planning and judging exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection.

The Sandemanian Elder

Faraday was a devout member of the Sandemanian church throughout his life. He served as a deacon and later as an elder. His faith and his science were deeply intertwined — he saw his scientific investigations as a way of understanding divine creation.

"I have never seen anything incompatible between those things of man which can be known by the spirit of man which is within him, and those higher things concerning his future, which he cannot know by that spirit."

— Michael Faraday

His Sandemanian beliefs emphasised humility, simplicity, and the rejection of worldly honours and wealth.

Refusing Knighthood and the Presidency

True to these principles, Faraday declined a knighthood offered by Queen Victoria, saying he wished to remain "plain Mr. Faraday to the end." He twice refused the presidency of the Royal Society. He gratefully accepted the use of a house at Hampton Court that Victoria provided for him in his retirement, but rejected every title and honour that carried social elevation.

What Faraday Made Possible

Virtually all electrical technology traces back to Faraday's discoveries. Electromagnetic induction is the operating principle of every electrical generator, transformer, and induction motor. His electric motor principle drives every machine that converts electricity to motion. His laws of electrolysis are fundamental to electroplating, aluminium smelting, chlorine production, and battery technology. His discovery of benzene underpins the entire petrochemical industry. The Faraday cage protects electronic equipment worldwide. His concept of field lines became, through Maxwell, the foundation of all electromagnetic theory — and ultimately of radio, television, radar, Wi-Fi, and the entire telecommunications industry.

Faraday's final experiment, in 1862, was an attempt to detect changes in spectral lines caused by a magnetic field — but his equipment was insufficient. Over 30 years later, the Dutch physicist Pieter Zeeman used improved apparatus to confirm exactly this effect, winning the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics. In both his 1897 paper and his Nobel acceptance speech, Zeeman explicitly credited Faraday's pioneering attempt.

What Einstein and Maxwell Said

Einstein kept a photograph of Faraday on his study wall alongside pictures of Newton and Maxwell. Maxwell wrote that Faraday was "in reality a mathematician of a very high order." The physicist Ernest Rutherford called him "one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time." He is frequently ranked among the top ten most influential scientists in history.

Commemorations

The farad (F), the SI unit of electrical capacitance, is named in his honour. The Faraday constant (F ≈ 96,485 C/mol), representing the charge of one mole of electrons, also bears his name. A statue of Faraday stands at Savoy Place in London, outside the Institution of Engineering and Technology. The Faraday Institution, founded in 2017, is the UK's independent institute for electrochemical energy storage research. The Royal Institution's Christmas Lectures, which he founded in the 1820s, continue annually to this day.

Faraday's image appeared on the reverse of the Bank of England Series E £20 banknote from 1991 to 2001, depicting him conducting a lecture at the Royal Institution. In 2002, he was ranked number 22 in the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons poll.

"The value of his work must be higher than the capitalisation of all the shares on the Stock Exchange!"

— Margaret Thatcher, in a speech to the Royal Society

"Even if I could be Shakespeare, I think I should still choose to be Faraday."

— Aldous Huxley

Einstein included Faraday alongside Newton and Maxwell in a 1933 speech on intellectual freedom at the Royal Albert Hall: "Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister."