Michael Faraday

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eminent 19th-century scientist Michael Faraday. Born into a poor working-class family, he received little formal schooling but became interested in science while working as a bookbinder’s apprentice. He is celebrated today for carrying out pioneering research into the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Faraday showed that if a wire was turned in the presence of a magnet or a magnet was turned in relation to a wire, an electric current was generated. This ground-breaking discovery led to the development of the electric generator and ultimately to modern power stations. During his life he became the most famous scientist in Britain and he played a key role in founding the Royal Institution’s Christmas lectures which continue today.

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Guests

• Geoffrey Cantor No other episodes
  Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the University of Leeds
• Laura Herz No other episodes
  Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford
• Frank James 2 episodes
  Professor of the History of Science at the Royal Institution

Reading list

• Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and Scientist: A Study of Science and Religion in the Nineteenth Century
  Geoffrey Cantor (Palgrave Macmillan, 1991) Google Books →
• Michael Faraday
  Geoffrey Cantor, David Gooding and Frank A. J. L. James (Palgrave Macmillan, 1991) Google Books →
• The Chemical History of a Candle
  Michael Faraday (ed. Frank James) (Oxford University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday 1791-1867
  David Gooding and Frank A. J. L. James (eds.) (Macmillan/Stockton Press, 1985) Google Books →
• Faraday: The Life
  James Hamilton (HarperCollins, 2002) Google Books →
• Michael Faraday: A Very Short Introduction
  Frank A. J. L. James (Oxford University Press, 2010) Google Books →
• The Correspondence of Michael Faraday
  Frank James (ed.) (Institution of Engineering and Technology, 1991-2012) Google Books →
• Michael Faraday: His Life and Work
  Silvanus Phillips Thompson (Elibron, 2004) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b06s9rz9

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06s9rz9

Auto-category: 530 (Physics)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. Near Waterloo Bridge in London, there's a rather unusual bronze statue of a man.