These are for adults, and the audience gets very dressed up for them. The first is our Friday Evening Discourses. In 1825, Faraday started two series of events that have been going on ever since. It is present in cigarette smoke and one of the chemicals that makes cigarettes so deadly. Benzene is used in lots of different industries, but is also very dangerous. Not long afterwards, he discovered a very important chemical called benzene. In 1821, he made the discovery that led to the development of the electric motor. However, when Davy left the RI as a researcher, Faraday was able to start making some of the amazing discoveries that made him famous. When they came back to England, Davy made Faraday work on different topics to him. Davy's wife treated Faraday like a servant on this trip. Davy and Faraday travelled together in Europe meeting many other famous scientists. Davy remembered being impressed with Michael Faraday, so hired him at the RI Chemical Assistant.įor the first few years that Faraday worked here he worked closely with Humphry Davy, although they didn't always get on. About a year later though, there was a fight between two RI staff members which meant that one of them was fired.
Unfortunately, there wasn't one available at the time. Faraday took notes and presented them to Davy hoping for a job at the Royal Institution. When he was 21, he was given tickets to talks at the Royal Institution by one of his customers and came to hear Humphry Davy talk. He started to read the books about science that he was binding, which got him interested in the subject. This sounds very young, but at the time it was very common to start work a lot younger than we expect to today. This was a job with a low status, which meant that Michael Faraday would have also had a low status when he was growing up.Īfter studying at school, at the age of 14 Faraday started an apprenticeship as a bookbinder. His father was a blacksmith, a person who works with iron and steel, shaping them in a hot furnace. Michael Faraday was born on 22 September 1791 in an area called Newington Butts, which is roughly where the Elephant and Castle is in modern London.