Michael Faraday: Physicist and chemist

Michael Faraday (22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was born in the village of Newington, now part of the urban area of London. His father was a blacksmith who had migrated from the north of England earlier in 1791 to look for work and his family was able to allow him but the most basic education.

He was hired in a London bookshop, run by Mr. George Riebau. This work enabled Michael Faraday to read many books, that passed through the bookshop of Mr. Riebau. In his spare time he was an avid reader, teaching himself many scientific concepts.

With the help of a customer of the shop, in 1812 Faraday was able to attend the public lectures of one of the most famous scientists of the day, the chemist Humphry Davy, director of the Royal Society. For our Michael it was a veritable godsend, and perhaps precisely for this reason, also thanks to his curiosity and his initiative, he was able to exploit this opportunity more than anyone else.

In 1813 he was appointed as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution. During his stay at the Royal Institution, Faraday managed to obtain the two fundamental laws of electrolysis.

*First LAW: For a given solution, the quantity of matter that is deposited on the electrodes is proportional to the amount of charge which passes through the solution. This implies that the ions carrying the charge through the solution have a well-defined electric charge.

*Second LAW: The monovalent ions of different sub-stances carry an equal quantity of electric charge, while the bi- or tri-valent ones carry a correspondingly higher charge.

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.

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.

Faraday was the author of numerous publications in scientific journals. his main contributions are collected in his Laboratory Journal, which he hold regularly from 1820 until 1862.

History of Faraday’s scientific discoveries·
*1810-1820 First Electrochemical Experiments·
*1820-1830 Electrical conduction experiments·
*1831 Law of electromagnetic induction·
*1832-1833 Laws of electrolysis·
*1837-39 Dielectric materials·
*1845-1846 Diamagnetism and Faraday effect·
*1855 Studies on paramagnetism

In 1833 he was appointed professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution and step by step he became famous worldwide. He also distinguished himself for his oratory, communication and outreach skills.

Michael Faraday: Physicist and chemist

Isaac Newton: English physicist and mathematician

Born: December 25, 1642

Died‎: ‎ March 20, 1727

Isaac Newton was born prematurely in the manor house of the tiny village of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, England, of Hannah Ayscough and Isaac. His father, who had died 3 months before Newton was born, was a yeoman farmer, who if not wealthy had sufficient means, and left a sizeable will. When Newton was 3 years old, his mother remarried the rector Barnabas Smith, from the next village 2 km away, leaving Newton to be raised by his grandparents.

He attended the King’s School in Grantham where he learned Latin among other things until the age of 17. In 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge. He went to Cambridge University, intent on obtaining a law degree. Instruction at Cambridge was dominated by the philosophy of Aristotle but Newton also studied the philosophy of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, and in particular Boyle. While at Cambridge he also became interested in mathematics, optics, physics and astronomy.

Sometime in late 1663 Newton also discovered mathematics- a subject not taught in any way at school, and barely at university. By 1664 he was buying various advanced books, which by Christmas 1664 included the works of Franz van Schootens, Descartes, and Wallis, on geometry, algebra, and infinite series. During this time period Newton seems to have absorbed much of the mathematics of his day, purely by solitary study, and become extremely interested in both pure mathematics and how it might be applied to the world.

Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician, who made seminal contributions to several domains of science, and was considered a leading scientist of his era and one of the most influential scientists of all time. 

Newton’s greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By 1666, Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. Using his discoveries in optics, Newton constructed the first reflecting telescope.  

His invention of the reflecting telescope brought fellowship in the Royal Society in 1671. A year later he published a letter in the Transactions of the Royal Society on his “new theory of light and colours.”

In 1667 he returned to Cambridge and became a fellow of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. In 1669, and at the age of 26, Newton became the Lucasian professor of mathematics. 

In 1704 Newton published his Opticks (in English), & the Latin translation in 1706. It was wildly popular.

In addition to his work on optics, Newton made seminal contributions to several other scientific disciplines. In his book the Principia or “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” which was published in 1687, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation and is considered to have laid the foundations for classical mechanics. 

He also introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid, studied the speed of sound, and developed an empirical law of cooling among other major contributions made to scientific discovery. 

In 1705 he was knighted, the first scientist to be so honoured for his work.

Isaac Newton: English physicist and mathematician