The Electric Boy

Michael Faraday

Today on Far Future Horizons we are especially proudly to present the tenth episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey hosted by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The title of this installment is “The Electric Boy”  which focuses on the life and work of the greatest experimental physicist of the nineteenth century ~ Michael Faraday.

Although Faraday received little formal education and came from an improved and humble background, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics.

Faraday began his career in science as the lab assistant to Sir Humphry Davy. 

Sir Humphry Davy

Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena.[ He similarly discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and the laws of electrolysis. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it is due in large part to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology.

Michael Faraday single handily discovered much of the physics that has forms the basis of our modern world.  Faraday’s work ushered in the technologies that would shape the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.   

If you want to learn more about the scientists mentioned in this and other episodes in the series here is a very good reference page ~ The Scientists of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

This episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey can be purchased from Amazon Instant video.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey ~ "The Electric Boy"

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