Faraday as a Discoverer | Page 4

the body, without injury to the spirit, of
these imperishable investigations, and to present them in a form which
should be convenient and useful to the student of the present day.
While I write, the volumes of the Life of Faraday by Dr. Bence Jones
have reached my hands. To them the reader must refer for an account
of Faraday's private relations. A hasty glance at the work shows me that
the reverent devotion of the biographer has turned to admirable account

the materials at his command.
The work of Dr. Bence Jones enables me to correct a statement
regarding Wollaston's and Faraday's respective relations to the
discovery of Magnetic Rotation. Wollaston's idea was to make the wire
carrying a current rotate round its own axis: an idea afterwards realised
by the celebrated Ampere. Faraday's discovery was to make the wire
carrying the current revolve round the pole of a magnet and the reverse.
John Tyndall. Royal Institution: December, 1869.

FARADAY AS A DISCOVERER.

Chapter 1
.
Parentage: introduction to the royal institution: earliest experiments:
first royal society paper: marriage.
It has been thought desirable to give you and the world some image of
MICHAEL FARADAY, as a scientific investigator and discoverer. The
attempt to respond to this desire has been to me a labour of difficulty, if
also a labour of love. For however well acquainted I may be with the
researches and discoveries of that great master--however numerous the
illustrations which occur to me of the loftiness of Faraday's character
and the beauty of his life--still to grasp him and his researches as a
whole; to seize upon the ideas which guided him, and connected them;
to gain entrance into that strong and active brain, and read from it the
riddle of the world-- this is a work not easy of performance, and all but
impossible amid the distraction of duties of another kind. That I should
at one period or another speak to you regarding Faraday and his work is
natural, if not inevitable; but I did not expect to be called upon to speak
so soon. Still the bare suggestion that this is the fit and proper time for
speech sent me immediately to my task: from it I have returned with
such results as I could gather, and also with the wish that those results
were more worthy than they are of the greatness of my theme.
It is not my intention to lay before you a life of Faraday in the ordinary
acceptation of the term. The duty I have to perform is to give you some
notion of what he has done in the world; dwelling incidentally on the
spirit in which his work was executed, and introducing such personal

traits as may be necessary to the completion of your picture of the
philosopher, though by no means adequate to give you a complete idea
of the man.
The newspapers have already informed you that Michael Faraday was
born at Newington Butts, on September 22, 1791, and that he died at
Hampton Court, on August 25, 1867. Believing, as I do, in the general
truth of the doctrine of hereditary transmission--sharing the opinion of
Mr. Carlyle, that 'a really able man never proceeded from entirely
stupid parents'--I once used the privilege of my intimacy with Mr.
Faraday to ask him whether his parents showed any signs of unusual
ability. He could remember none. His father, I believe, was a great
sufferer during the latter years of his life, and this might have masked
whatever intellectual power he possessed. When thirteen years old, that
is to say in 1804, Faraday was apprenticed to a bookseller and
bookbinder in Blandford Street, Manchester Square: here he spent eight
years of his life, after which he worked as a journeyman elsewhere.
You have also heard the account of Faraday's first contact with the
Royal Institution; that he was introduced by one of the members to Sir
Humphry Davy's last lectures, that he took notes of those lectures;
wrote them fairly out, and sent them to Davy, entreating him at the
same time to enable him to quit trade, which he detested, and to pursue
science, which he loved. Davy was helpful to the young man, and this
should never be forgotten: he at once wrote to Faraday, and afterwards,
when an opportunity occurred, made him his assistant.[1] Mr. Gassiot
has lately favoured me with the following reminiscence of this time:--
'Clapham Common, Surrey, 'November 28, 1867.
'My Dear Tyndall,--Sir H. Davy was accustomed to call on the late Mr.
Pepys, in the Poultry, on his way to the London Institution, of which
Pepys was one of the original managers; the latter told me that on one
occasion Sir H. Davy, showing him a letter, said: "Pepys, what