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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Engaging Tale of the Man Behind the Famous Discoveries, April 9, 2006
This review is from: The Electric Life of Michael Faraday (Hardcover)
You wouldn't be reading this if it weren't for Michael Faraday. In this excellent book, the man whose name many of us remember from our physics or electronics texts and who made possible the Internet by which these words come to you, is brought to life as a real person with a truly engaging life story. Hirschfeld's book is a highly-readable biography of the man who started the world on the path to radio, electronics, and computers. Wireless pioneers Marconi, Fessenden, deForest and others built their technology on the scientific foundation laid by Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz, both of whom credited Faraday's work as the basis of their own. Faraday's contributions to electrical science were numerous and far-reaching. Among others, he discovered electrical induction (making the world's first transformer), made the first electric motor, made the first electric generator. and was the first to show that magnetic effects could change the polarization of light (what now is called Faraday rotation). Faraday's later speculations about electric fields were, according to Maxwell, what spurred the latter to begin the work that led to Maxwell's famous equations describing electromagnetic radiation. When Hertz first produced radio waves in his laboratory, he also acknowledged that he was following on the work of not only Maxwell but of Faraday. In telling the story of these discoveries by Faraday and his successors, Hirshfeld, a physics professor, is careful to put their work in the context of our modern understanding. Faraday entered the world of science through the back door. The son of a blacksmith, Faraday became an apprentice bookbinder. Inspired by some of the scientific texts he was binding, he began experimenting in his spare time. Self-taught in science through his reading and his experiments, Faraday began his scientific career as a menial assistant to famed British scientist Humphrey Davy. Eventually, he rose to the directorship of a research institute, fellowship in Britain's Royal Society and acclaim as one of the world's leading scientists. Hirshfeld's account of Faraday's career gives us an intriguing glimpse into the sociology and politics of 19th-Century science. Readers who enjoy electronic tinkering will relate well to this story of a scientist whose first love was his laboratory, and who could readily lose track of time while building and experimenting with new apparatus. Faraday's approach to science was completely "hands-on." When he built the first Faraday cage, he crawled inside it himself to prove that it worked. Occasionally, Hirshfeld relates, Faraday's wife had to pick glass shards from her husband's skin after an experiment inadvertently exploded. In his later years, Faraday became an avid proponent of science education and of promoting scientific literacy among the public. His thoughts on those subjects, related by Hirshfeld, are as relevant today as when Faraday wrote them. Hirshfeld's book shows how all of electronics really got its start in Faraday's laboratory, and tells in fast-paced, readable fashion the fascinating story of one of history's greatest scientists.
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Faraday: humble and tender of heart, August 19, 2006
This review is from: The Electric Life of Michael Faraday (Hardcover)
"The Electric Life of Michael Faraday" by Alan Hirshfeld [Hirshfeld is also author of "Parallax: the Race to Measure the Cosmos"] From the dust jacket of this book, a photograph of Michael Faraday's looks out toward us. His face is the very depiction of human kindness and his eyes show forth a tenderness that is almost maternal. It is a compelling face, and in a social setting, one would feel drawn to stand toe to toe with such a man. Hirshfeld has authored an endearing view of 19th Century English life through Faraday's eyes, a life characterized by the snobbery of class distinctions, combined with the imminent discoveries of science in many fields. In scarcely a century and a half, mankind went from the Voltaic Cell to Nuclear Power, and the discoveries of both and everything in between are linked, and the scientific work of Faraday is the key to all. It is Faraday's pursuit of the idea of magnetic "fields" that showed the way. James Clerk Maxwell employed his mathematical talents to put Faraday's ideas into the form of equations. Albert Einstein would later use these equations to arrive at E=MC (squared), opening the door to the Nuclear Age. Until I read this biography, I was not clear on who or when or how our knowledge and identification of Elements came to be. It was the use of the Voltaic Cell, a battery, whose electro-chemical process separated any compound into its basic elements that served as the tool of discovery. Faraday was in hot pursuit of the science of electricity and magnetism, which led him to approach Humphry Davy of the Royal Institute concerning employment. Davy was at the forefront of the use of the Voltaic Cell for discovery. Nitrous Oxide was an early gas to fall prey to Davy's efforts, and these early scientists, including Faraday, would sometimes engage in "laughing gas" parties, from which there were no harmful effects. Faraday was not a mathematician, and didn't have much in the way of credentials as a THEORIST. He was respected as an EXPERIMENTER. Faraday had to try all the harder to confirm, by experimental proof, his intuitive idea that magnetism existed as a field of curved lines, and also that magnetism was not a different energy, unconnected to electricity; but a counterpart of a common, electromagnetic force. The account of Faraday's experiments with electricity, to see if it affected light, and then magnetism to see if it affected light, is one of the book's high points. That was close to the end of Faraday's career, when he was experiencing some occasional memory loss and worked constantly. The hight point of the book comes when Faraday has passed the peak of his career, and Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell researches Faradays writings on FIELD THEORY. When I got to the final pages, and the account of Faraday's funeral, I found I had tears in my eyes.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An inspiring book, July 9, 2006
This review is from: The Electric Life of Michael Faraday (Hardcover)
A remarkable and compelling biography in the clear words of this author. How important was Faraday to science, shaping the study of electricity and electromagnetism with his experiments. Also, the life of Faraday is so interesting since, as a person lacking normal education, show us that anyone can improve his knowledge by just reading good books, as faraday did, and also show us that the best way to learn a subject is by seing it working. An inspiring book.
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