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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 January 2011
Michael Faraday (1791–1867) was born in a village near London into the family of a blacksmith. His family was too poor to keep him at school and, at the age of 13, he took a job as an errand boy in a bookshop. A year later he was apprenticed as a bookbinder for a term of seven years. Faraday was not only binding the books but was also reading many of them, which excited in him a burning interest in science.
When his term of apprenticeship in the bookshop was coming to an end, he applied for the job of assistant to Sir Humphry Davy, the celebrated chemist, whose lectures Faraday was attending during his apprenticeship. When Davy asked the advice of one of the governors of the Royal Institution of Great Britain about the employment of a young bookbinder, the man said: “Let him wash bottles! If he is any good he will accept the work; if he refuses, he is not good for anything.” Faraday accepted, and remained with the Royal Institution for the next fifty years, first as Davy's assistant, then as his collaborator, and finally, after Davy's death, as his successor. It has been said that Faraday was Davy's greatest discovery.
In 1823 Faraday liquefied chlorine and in 1825 he discovered the substance known as benzene. He also did significant work in electrochemistry, discovering the laws of electrolysis. However, his greatest work was with electricity.
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