Michael Faraday; His Life and Work

by Silvanus Phillips Thompson (Creator)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Genres: Biography

336 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2012

About the author

Silvanus Phillips Thompson FRS was a professor of physics at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury, England. He was known for his work as an electrical engineer and as an author.

Thompson is one of the individuals represented on the Engineers Walk in Bristol, England.

Thompson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1891 and was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1894.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I made the smooth-reading of this book and Project Gutenberg will publish it pretty soon.

CONTENTS
PAGE
Chap. I.—Early Life, Training, and Travel 1
Chap. II.—Life at the Royal Institution 35
Chap. III.—Scientific Researches—First Period 75
Chap. IV.—Scientific Researches—Second Period 102
Chap. V.—Scientific Researches—Third Period 172
Chap. VI.—Middle and Later Life 222
Chap. VII.—Views on the Pursuit of Science and on Education 261
Chap. VIII.—Religious Views 286

[Morzejko Leporello · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did enjoy the book on two levels: as the biography of one of the most important scientists of all time, and for the writing itself. Silvanus Thompson was a scientist and a writer and though younger than Faraday, still living in the same era. As such he was an ideal candidate to write Faraday's biography. Throughout the book one can sense the author's admiration for Faraday's work and this "rubs" on the reader as well. And being a scientist himself, Thompson has no problem describing accurately and clearly Faraday's discoveries and inventions, something that is often lacking in biographies of scientists written by good writer who, however, do not have a scientific or engineering background.
Silvanus Thompson wrote an equally interesting biography of William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), his contemporary.

[Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this look into the life of a Christian experimenter, possibly the best the world has ever seen. Faraday was brilliant and some of the conjectures and experiments he came up with, without significant scientific or mathematical training, was amazing. As an engineer, I enjoyed the speculations on things such as electromagnetics, written from the standpoint of someone in the 1800s.