( 188 ) 



CHAPTEK VI. 



FAKADAY. 



TOWARDS the end of the year 1812, Davy received a letter in 

 which the writer, a bookbinder's journeyman named Michael 

 Faraday, expressed a desire to escape from trade, and obtain 

 employment in a scientific laboratory. With the letter was 

 enclosed a neatly written copy of notes which the young man 

 he was twenty-one years of age had made of Davy's own 

 public lectures. The great chemist replied courteously, and 

 arranged an interview ; at which he learnt that his correspon- 

 dent had educated himself by reading the volumes which came 

 into his hands for binding. "There were two," Faraday 

 wrote later, "that especially helped me, the 'Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica,' from which I gained my first notions of electricity, 

 and Mrs. Marcet's ' Conversations on Chemistry/ which gave 

 me my foundation in that science." Already, before his applica- 

 tion to Davy, he had performed a number of chemical 

 experiments, and had made for himself a voltaic pile, with 

 which he had decomposed several compound bodies. 



At Davy's recommendation Faraday was in the following 

 spring appointed to a post in the laboratory of the Koyal 

 Institution, which had been established at the close of the 

 eighteenth century under the auspices of Count Rumford ; and 

 here he remained for the whole of his active life, first as 

 assistant, then as director of the laboratory, and from 1833 

 onwards as the occupant of a chair of chemistry which was 

 founded for his benefit. 



For many years Faraday was directly under Davy's influence, 

 and was occupied chiefly in chemical investigations. But in 

 1821, when the new field of inquiry opened by Oersted's 



