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Harvard Classics. E-book. Formato PDF Charles William Eliot - Forgotten Books, 2017 -
Michael Faraday was the son of a blacksmith, and was born at Newington Butts, near London, September 22, 1791. He began life as an errand-boy to a bookbinder and stationer, to whom he was later bound apprentice. After eight years in this business, he was engaged by Sir Humphry Davy as his laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution, and in 1813-15 he traveled extensively on the Continent with his master, and saw some of the most famous scientists of Europe. Shortly after his return to the Royal Institution, he began to make contributions of his own to science, his first paper appearing in 1816. He became director of the laboratory in 1825, and professor of chemistry in 1833; rising rapidly, through the number and importance of his discoveries, to a most distinguished position. But he was working at too great pressure, and in 1841 his health gave way, so that for some three years he could not work at all. He recovered, however, and made some of his most important discoveries after this interruption; and was offered, but declined, the presidency of both the Royal Society and the Royal Institution. He died August 25, 1867.It was characteristic of Faraday's devotion to the enlargement of the bounds of human knowledge that on his discovery of magneto-electricity he abandoned the commercial work by which he had added to his small salary, in order to reserve all his energies for research. This financial loss was in part made up later by a pension of €300 a year from the British Government.Faraday's parents were members of the obscure religious denomination of the Sandemanians, and Faraday himself, shortly after his marriage, at the age of thirty, joined the same sect, to which he adhered till his death. Religion and science he kept strictly apart, believing that the data of science were of an entirely different nature from the direct communications between God and the soul on which his religious faith was based.The discoveries made by Faraday were so numerous, and often demand so detailed a knowledge of chemistry and physics before they can be understood, that it is impossible to attempt to describe or even enumerate them here.
Harvard Classics. E-book. Formato PDF Charles William Eliot - Forgotten Books, 2017 -
Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to be talking of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to others, who, through respect to age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing, since this may be read or not as any one pleases. And, lastly (i may as well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, Without vanity I may say, &c., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life. And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me, in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others have done: the com plexion of my future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our af?ictions. The notes one of my uncles (who had the same kind of curiosity in collecting family anecdotes) once put into my hands, furnished me with several particulars relating to our ancestors. From these notes I learned that the family had lived in the same village, Ecton, in Northamptonshire, for three hundred years, and how much longer he knew not (perhaps from the time when the name of Franklin, that before was the name of an order of people, was assumed by them as a surname when others took surnames all over the kingdom), on a freehold of about thirty acres, aided by the smith's business, which had continued in the family till his time.