Michael Faraday P — L.P. williams

This definitive biography illustrates for the first time the full extent of Michael Faraday's monumental contributions to modern physics. For a major portion of his life. Faraday was one of the more controversial figures in nineteenth-century science. Through his ingenious discovery that electrical current could be induced by means of a magnet was generally applauded most of Faraday's contemporaries clung to orthodox theories, discounting the greater implications of Faraday's work. It is to Faraday's daring new vision of physical reality, however, that modern science owes the concept of field theory and the electromagnetic theory of light. Drawing on heretofore-unpublished materials as well as on Faraday's published papers and laboratory diaries. L. Pearce Williams depicts the metamorphosis of Faraday's ideas from radical speculation to orthodox scientific theory. Correcting the misconception that Faraday was an empiricist to whom theory was anathema. Williams re-creates each of Faraday's major experiments in step-by-step detail, carefully reconstructing the theoretical links among discoveries. Illustrated with 118 halftones and drawings, this readable and engaging book affords fresh insights into the scientific world of the nineteenth century and the singular contributions of one of its foremost and most controversial figures.