Michael Faraday

1791 – 1867 · United Kingdom · Physics, Chemistry

A bookbinder's apprentice who gave humanity electricity on demand.

Summary^1,3

With almost no formal schooling and no mathematics, Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction — that a changing magnetic field creates a current — and thereby the principle of the generator, the transformer and the electric motor. He also introduced the concept of the field, which Maxwell then wrote as equations and Einstein built upon.

Achievements^1,4

Discovered electromagnetic induction (1831), the basis of all electrical power generation
Built the first electric motor and the first dynamo
Discovered benzene, invented the Bunsen-type burner precursor and the laws of electrolysis
Founded the Christmas Lectures for young people at the Royal Institution, still running today

Principal works^1,3

Experimental Researches in ElectricityThe Chemical History of a CandleFaraday's laws of electrolysis

How the work shapes the world today^2,4

Essentially every watt on every grid on Earth is generated by spinning a magnet past a coil — Faraday's 1831 experiment at industrial scale. Wireless charging, induction hobs, electric-vehicle motors and MRI scanners are direct applications. The field concept underwrites all modern physics. The farad, the unit of capacitance in every electronic device, is named for him.

Posterity and the family line^2,4

Faraday married Sarah Barnard and had no children. He twice refused a knighthood and declined burial in Westminster Abbey.

1 people · 1 generations · 0 links with primary documentation

No direct line
Family
Childless. His chosen successor was intellectual: James Clerk Maxwell, who translated Faraday's field pictures into mathematics in 1865.
Attested

Every link carries its own evidence. Documented means a register, will, archive or prize record names the relationship; attested rests on scholarly reference; contested is disputed between sources; and where the record runs out it is marked rather than filled in.

Continuity of ideas

Who shaped Michael Faraday, and who they shaped

Inherited from3

Alessandro Volta
1745 – 1827 · Physics, Chemistry
The voltaic pile gave Faraday the steady current his electrochemistry required.
Benjamin Franklin
1706 – 1790 · Physics, Literature
Franklin's single-fluid theory of electricity and his charge conventions are what Faraday's field work refined.
Ruđer Bošković
1711 – 1787 · Physics, Astronomy
Bošković's point-atom force theory is a stated influence on Faraday's field concept.

Passed the work to3

Alfred Nobel
1833 – 1896 · Chemistry, Engineering
Nitroglycerine chemistry belongs to the nineteenth-century laboratory culture Faraday's generation built.
James Clerk Maxwell
1831 – 1879 · Physics, Mathematics
Maxwell put Faraday's lines of force into equations.
Nikola Tesla
1856 – 1943 · Engineering, Physics
Induction — Faraday's discovery — is the physics of Tesla's motor and transformer.

Sources and references

Numbered markers in the text above point to the entries below. Each links to a primary document, archival collection or scholarly reference where the claim about Michael Faraday can be checked.