On 3 April 1846, Michael Faraday stood up to deliver the traditional Friday evening lecture at London’s Royal Institution. He was a last-minute fill-in. The speaker he’d invited, physicist Charles Wheatstone, suffered a late bout of stage fright and Faraday was forced to make up the hour with an ad-lib update on the latest electrical inventions.
His words ran out before his time did, so Faraday spent the last few minutes sharing his thoughts on a new field he’d been looking into, electromagnetic theory.
Nobody in the audience had a clue what he was talking about.
Today, 180 years later, magnets are central to the technologies that shape our world. Smartphones, MRI machines, wind turbines, hard drives… all rely on Faraday’s foundational work in electromagnetic theory. The future will be shaped by the forces he discovered, whether in quantum computing, cancer-detecting ingestible pills, or high-speed magnetic levitation (maglev) trains.
No-one in that Royal Institution audience could have seen that future coming because Faraday – while an excellent instinctive physicist – did not have the scientific education to formalise his theories.
From a poor family
Faraday shouldn’t even have been in the Royal Institution in the first place. His father was a modest blacksmith, whose chronic health problems meant the family struggled financially. That poverty left young Michael with only a rudimentary schooling which – compounded by a stammer – left him working as a bookbinder at the age of 13.
Faraday’s natural curiosity prompted him to read the books he worked on, including the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and he developed a keen interest in the sciences of electricity and magnetism, leading him to attend Royal Institution meetings as he sought to learn even more.
He brought his interests home, turning the family home into a makeshift laboratory, where he built an electrostatic generator using old bottles and pieces of wood. In 1813 he found work at the Royal Institution as an assistant to the noted chemist Sir Humphry Davy.
“I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your mind,” he wrote in some lecture notes.
That big break led to a series of scientific breakthroughs. By 1821 Faraday had published an academic paper on electromagnetic rotation. By 1827 he was heading up the Royal Institution’s chemistry department. In 1831 he discovered electromagnetic induction when, in a series of experiments, he moved a magnet near a coil of wire to induce an electric current.
This led to further experiments and breakthroughs in electrical generators and motors.
“I happen to have discovered a direct relation between magnetism and light, also electricity and light, and the field it opens is so large and rich,” he said.
Faraday is considered one of the greatest experimenters of all time.
Small beginning precede all great things
He was fully aware of the wonder of the natural world that he observed. “I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your mind,” he wrote in some lecture notes.
Science teaches us “to be neglectful of nothing, not to despise the small beginnings — they precede of necessity all great things,” he wrote in other lecture notes. “Vesicles (minute particles or droplets) make clouds; they are trifles light as air, but then they make drops, and drops make showers, rain makes torrents and rivers, and these can alter the face of a country…
“It teaches a continual comparison of the small and great.”
James Clerk Maxwell had what Faraday lacked: a comfortable childhood, a formal education, and a clear understanding of mathematics. Maxwell, 40 years Faraday’s junior, would often attend lectures at the Royal Institution, where he came into regular contact with Faraday.
Although the two men corresponded with each other and are known to have dined together, their 40-year age gap meant that they were never close. Their relationship was one of intellectual dialogue and mutual respect, each recognising the other’s talent.
“Maxwell’s many claims to fame include being the first to show that any colour can be produced by mixing red, green, and blue light. He also produced the first durable colour photograph.”
Maxwell picked up where the old man left off, writing the mathematical formulae that put words and numbers to Faraday’s observations. In 1865, Maxwell published “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”, showing how electric and magnetic fields travel through space like waves, moving at the speed of light.
His equations showed that light was electromagnetic radiation, and his work predicted that other forms of radiation would soon be discovered.
He was right, of course. Radio, radar, X-rays, and television signals all followed from Maxwell’s findings.
Faraday knew little of this. His mind blunted by dementia, he passed away quietly in 1867, at age 75.
“What’s the go o’ that?”
Shy and eccentric in his youth, Maxwell was described by biographer Ellen McHenry as “not only one of the most brilliant intellects ever to walk the earth, but also one of the most humble and gracious men who ever lived.”
From a young age, he was intensely curious, always asking probing questions about the world – famously in his Scottish dialect, saying “What’s the go o’ that? (What makes that go?)” and, if unsatisfied, “But what’s the particular go o’ that?”
Maxwell was driven by a genuine, almost playful delight in discovery and making things. He was also known for his extraordinary patience and determination.
His colleague P.G. Tait remarked that Maxwell’s habit of constructing mental images of problems, combined with his penetrating intellect and patient determination, was a key to his success.
Despite his towering intellect, Maxwell was remembered by contemporaries for his kindness, humility, and unselfishness. His colleague and biographer William Garnett wrote in an obituary: “… there were other sides of his character which outshone even those scientific attainments. Such complete unselfishness and tender consideration as he exhibited for those around him, and especially for those under his control, are seldom to be met with.
“During the eight years that he held the Chair of Physics at Cambridge, he never spoke a hasty word, even to his attendants. His self-sacrificing devotion to those he loved was the marvel of his friends.”
“This story makes us wonder what we are capable of, and what our little responsibilities might lead to, should we be open-minded and give our all to each opportunity.”
“Faraday and Maxwell’s relationship was like a dance,” said Bertus. “On one side you have an unqualified but highly intellectual visionary, who saw things with such freshness and keenness; on the other, a highly educated mathematician, who worked out the formulae for those observations – and who, despite the refined education that might have made him arrogant, respected Faraday’s natural genius.
“This story holds value to us because it once again highlights how something very, very small can lead to unmeasurable change. In Faraday’s case, it all started with him accepting work in a bookbinding shop. Without that exposure, his life might have been completely different.
“One might have thought that his first humble job was insignificant. This story makes us wonder what we are capable of, and what our little responsibilities might lead to, should we be open-minded and give our all to each opportunity.”
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