Michael Faraday, born on 22 September 1791, in Newington Butts, England, United Kingdom, was an English physicist and chemist whose many experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism.
Faraday,
who became one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century, began his career
as a chemist. He wrote a manual of practical chemistry that reveals his mastery
of the technical aspects of his art, discovered a number of new organic
compounds, among them benzene, and was the first to liquefy a
“permanent” gas
(i.e., one that was believed to be incapable of liquefaction). His major
contribution, however, was in the field of electricity and magnetism. He was the first to produce
an electric current from a magnetic field, invented the first electric
motor and dynamo, demonstrated the relation between electricity and chemical
bonding, discovered the effect of magnetism on light, and discovered and named diamagnetism,
the peculiar behaviour of certain substances in strong magnetic fields. He
provided the experimental, and a good deal of the theoretical, foundation upon
which James Clerk Maxwell erected classical
electromagnetic field theory.
