From Barnes & Noble
British scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) summarized his research strategy in three words ("Work. Finish. Publish.") but his scientific contribution owed as much to his brilliant intuitive flashes as to his no-frills work philosophy. Alan Hirshfeld's medium-sized (250 pages) biography of Faraday rescues this original thinker from specialists to make him and his discoveries accessible to general readers. An intimate view of an epoch-maker.
From the Publisher
The Electric Life of Michael Faraday dramatizes Michael Faraday's passion for understanding the dynamics of nature. He manned the barricades against superstition and pseudoscience, and pressed for a scientifically literate populace years before science had been deemed worthy of common study. A friend of Charles Dickens and an inspiration to Thomas Edison, the deeply religious Faraday sought no financial gain from his discoveries, content to reveal God's presence through the design of nature. Faraday speaks to us today through the prose of his letters and journals. In The Electric Life of Michael Faraday, Alan Hirshfeld presents an intimate and memorable portrait of an icon of science, making Faraday's most significant discoveries about electricity and magnetism readily understandable, and immortalizing his momentous contributions to the modern world.
Publishers Weekly
Nineteenth-century English scientist Faraday, who made the revolutionary discovery that electricity, magnetism and light are all related, personified the self-made man. Son of a blacksmith, Faraday (1791-1867) was apprenticed at an early age to a bookbinder, who encouraged him to pursue the interest in science that he'd gained from reading the books that crossed his workbench. By a great stroke of luck, he went to work for the eminent scientist Sir Humphry Davy. As physicist Hirshfeld (Parallax) relates, from that point on, Faraday proved unstoppable as he made important discoveries in every field he applied himself to. His breakthrough came when he discovered that he could induce an electric current by moving a magnet inside a coil of wire. This led to his development of the dynamo, precursor to the electric motor. Equally important, Faraday hypothesized that electromagnetism extended into space via lines of flux. Faraday's background in mathematics was weak, so he couldn't prove this, but a young scientist he befriended late in his career, James Clerk Maxwell, finally did. In an elegantly written biography, Hirshfeld, winner of a Templeton Foundation prize for an essay on Faraday, captures the scientist's rough-and-tumble times, and most readers will be able to follow his clear descriptions of Faraday's achievements. 18 b&w illus. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Today, we would have difficulty associating scientific research with the aristocracy, but in the 18th and 19th centuries nearly all scientific research was the hobby of the curious rich or was supported by wealthy "patrons." To break the barrier of class and education was practically impossible, except that Michael Faraday did. Born in poverty, apprenticed to a tolerant and kindly bookbinder who permitted after-hours experimentation, and mentored by Sir Humphry Davy, Faraday eventually eclipsed his contemporaries and invented the electric motor and the electric generator. Expanding on his essay about Faraday, which won the John Templeton Foundation's Power of Purpose competition, Hirshfeld (physics, Univ. of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; Parallax) paints a fascinating picture of the "scientific" class system in early 19th-century London. Giving dimension to these early experimenters, his book will engage both general readers and the more scientifically minded. Suitable for high school, public, and academic libraries.-Margaret F. Dominy, Drexel Univ. Lib., Philadelphia Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The consummate research scientist was a nice man, too, according to this respectful biography by Hirshfeld (Physics/Univ. of Massachusetts Dartmouth; Parallax, 2001). An eager autodidact while still an apprenticed bookbinder, Michael Faraday (1791-1867) earnestly attended lectures at London's Royal Institution, where he brought himself to the attention of aristocratic chemist Sir Humphrey Davy. He became Davy's acolyte and Man Friday, traveling to the Continent with the great man and the great man's scornful wife. Soon Faraday himself was lecturing at the Royal Institution. He eventually became a member, over the initial objection of Sir Humphrey, and remained at the Institution for the rest of his scientific career. The former craftsman entertained children with demonstrations of static electrical phenomena. He countered the craze for spiritualism with experiments that discredited the alleged art of non-corporeal furniture-moving. He devised and demonstrated prototypes of an electromagnetic motor, a transformer, a capacitor, a dynamo. He hypothesized about light waves, magnetic polarity and field theory. Among his magnets, galvanometers, coils and sparks, he conducted dazzling experiments that illuminated hitherto hidden forces of nature. While his electrical discoveries became landmarks in the history of science, there was little to shock anyone in Faraday's personal history. He married, gained fame, became old and forgetful, then died peacefully, having given little offense during his long life. His correspondence reveals an elegant writer and a generous mentor to James Clerk Maxwell, among others. As a formulator of the modern scientific method and an exemplary investigator, he stoodin the forefront of a distinguished line that led from benighted alchemy to technological innovations like BlackBerries and iPods. The author takes evident pleasure in recounting his subject's scientific contributions. Satisfying for those who get a special charge out of stories from the annals of science.
loading...