Michael Faraday
(1791 - 1867)
Born to a poor family in London, he was extremely curious, questioning everything. He felt an urgent need to know more. At age 13, he became an errand boy for a bookbinding shop in London. He read every book that he bound, and decided that one day he would write a book of his own. He became interested in the concept of energy, or more specifically, force. Because of his early reading and experiments with the idea of force, he was able to make important discoveries in electricity later in life.
He eventually became a chemist and physicist. He isolated benzene (a clear, colorless, flammable liquid derived from petroleum and used to manufacture motor fuels). He performed experiments demonstrating discovery of electromagnetic induction. This discovery paved the way for changing mechanical energy into electrical energy. |
