****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Geniuses come in many forms. In physics they almost always have strong mathematical skills that go beyond everyone else - Newton and Einstein being the best examples. Today we have a split between experimental and theoretical physics but all physicists have to understand the fundamentals of higher mathematics. Not so Michael Faraday, perhaps the last experimentalist who could do his work with very limited understanding of math. Faraday had an uncanny ability to intuit experiments to prove new and original insights without understanding the mathematical theory behind them. His utterly brilliant demonstration of the rotation of a magnet around a fixed electrified metal rod and at the same time the rotation of a metal rod around an electrified magnet changed the world we live in. (The image of this simple experiment is on p. 81 in the book.) Faraday's personal and professional life is detailed in this superbly written biography by Alan Hirshfeld.Hirshfeld writes in a clear and easy-to-read style that keeps the reader interested in the flow of Faraday's life. He explains the origin of what today is our electrical infrastructure in comprehensible language with excellent images to support them. In the 210 pages of text he covers all the critical events of Faraday's life from his upbringing as a blacksmith's son to his apprenticeship for the charismatic Humphry Davy to his success as the leading physicist in England and finally to his support for the person who gave the mathematical foundation to his speculations about "fields," James Clerk Maxwell. Faraday combined his experimental genius with a genuine sense of humility largely imbued in him by his lifelong membership in the Sandemanian sect of Protestantism. This group, which I had never heard of prior to this book, was a wellspring of support for Faraday his entire life. It helped him keep his life in focus. Part of that focus was to write about his failures as well as his successes because his goal was not to look good but to get at the truth. His book Experimental Researches in Electricity not only explains the origin of many of the ideas that run the modern world but also is a manual about doing science - the failed and successful experiments, what materials and techniques worked and which did not - all explained in nonmathematical terms. At the same time that he was changing our view of nature, Faraday started a series of science lectures for children in 1826 and he himself gave most of them. He argued that, while science was changing the world, the majority of young people were being raised with superstition, folklore ideas about the world and what we call today pseudo-science. (As Hirshfeld notes, similarities with the contemporary world are clear.) His lectures for adults at the Royal Institution were not as theatrical as Davy's but became staples on Friday nights for anyone interested in how the physical world worked. Besides being a first-rate original thinker, Faraday was also a clear communicator of scientific ideas until the last decade or so of his life. What appears to be some form of early dementia deprived science of one of its greatest spokesmen.This book has my highest recommendation. It was hard to put down. The gradual loss of memory and function that Faraday experienced is especially tragic in the sense that this man had given so much to science and never wanted to quit his experimentation. What Michael Faraday gave to us is something we enjoy every day that we heat our houses, cook our food and turn on our lights. He was also a genuinely good human being. You would not be disappointed in this book.
