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12 - The Faraday effect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

Masud Mansuripur
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Summary

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) was born in a village near London into the family of a blacksmith. His family was too poor to keep him at school and, at the age of 13, he took a job as an errand boy in a bookshop. A year later he was apprenticed as a bookbinder for a term of seven years. Faraday was not only binding the books but was also reading many of them, which excited in him a burning interest in science.

When his term of apprenticeship in the bookshop was coming to an end, he applied for the job of assistant to Sir Humphry Davy, the celebrated chemist, whose lectures Faraday was attending during his apprenticeship. When Davy asked the advice of one of the governors of the Royal Institution of Great Britain about the employment of a young bookbinder, the man said: “Let him wash bottles! If he is any good he will accept the work; if he refuses, he is not good for anything.” Faraday accepted, and remained with the Royal Institution for the next fifty years, first as Davy's assistant, then as his collaborator, and finally, after Davy's death, as his successor. It has been said that Faraday was Davy's greatest discovery.

In 1823 Faraday liquefied chlorine and in 1825 he discovered the substance known as benzene. He also did significant work in electrochemistry, discovering the laws of electrolysis. However, his greatest work was with electricity.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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References

Adapted from George Gamow, The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein, Dover Publications, New York, 1961. Some of the historical anecdotes have been compiled from information available on the worldwide web; see, for example, www.phy.uct.ac.za, www.iee.org.uk, www.woodrow.org.
Pershan, P. S., Magneto-optical effects, J. Appl. Phys. 38, 1482–1490 (1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, F. A. and White, H. E., Fundamentals of Optics, fourth edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1976.Google Scholar
Wood, R. W., Physical Optics, third edition, Optical Society of America, Washington DC, 1988.Google Scholar
Smith, D. O., Magneto-optical scattering from multilayer magnetic and dielectric films, Opt. Acta 12, 13 (1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansuripur, M., The Physical Principles of Magneto-optical Recording, Cambridge University Press, UK, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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  • The Faraday effect
  • Masud Mansuripur, University of Arizona
  • Book: Classical Optics and its Applications
  • Online publication: 31 January 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803796.015
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  • The Faraday effect
  • Masud Mansuripur, University of Arizona
  • Book: Classical Optics and its Applications
  • Online publication: 31 January 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803796.015
Available formats
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  • The Faraday effect
  • Masud Mansuripur, University of Arizona
  • Book: Classical Optics and its Applications
  • Online publication: 31 January 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803796.015
Available formats
×