[From Encyclopaedia Britannica.] 



XCIX. Faraday. 



FARADAY, MICIIABL* chemist, electrician, and philosopher, was bora at New- 

 Surrey, 22nd September, 1791, and died at Hampton Court, 25th August, 

 1867. Hit parent* had migrated from Yorkshire to London, where his father 

 worked as a blacksmith. Faraday himself became apprenticed to Mr Riebau, 

 a bookbinder. The letters written to his friend Benjamin Abbott at this time 

 give a lucid account of hia aims in life, and of his methods of self-culture, 

 when his mind was beginning to turn to the experimental study of nature. 

 In 1812 Mr Dance, a customer of his master, took him to hear four lectures 

 by Sir Humphry Davy. Faraday took notes of these lectures, and afterwards 

 wrote them out in a fuller form. Under the encouragement of Mr Dance, he 

 wrote to Sir H. Davy, enclosing these notes. "The reply was immediate, kind, 

 and favourable." He continued to work as a journeyman bookbinder till 1st 

 March, 1818, when, at the recommendation of Sir H. Davy, he was appointed 

 it in the laboratory of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He 



appointed director of the laboratory 7th February, 1825; and in 1833 

 he was appointed Fullerton Professor of Chemistry in the Institution for life, 

 without the obligation to deliver lectures. He thus remained in the Institu- 

 tion 54 years. He accompanied Sir H. Davy on a tour through France, Italy, 

 Switzerland. Tyrol, Geneva, etc. from October 13th, 1813, to April 23, 1815. 



Faraday's earliest chemical work was in the paths opened by Davy, to whom 

 he acted as assistant. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two 

 new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the 

 diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by Dalton, the physical 

 importance of which has been more fully brought to light by Graham and 

 Loscbmidt He succeeded in liquifying several gases ; he investigated the alloys 

 of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. 



