The Making of Michael Faraday - Objectivity 105

One of the all-time great scientists, I feel like I start most of our videos by saying one of the all-time great scientists. It's true in this case. It's definitely true in this case, is Michael Faraday. I think he's the greatest hands-on experimental scientist of the 19th century and he's well known for his work on electricity and electromagnetism, so great, great figure. Now as you can imagine, when you're a really, really great scientist you win lots of things, you join lots of societies, you get an extraordinary number of certificates. So Faraday actually gave this volume to the society and it is just a litany of his awards and prizes, certificates from academies all over the world, some of them very decorative, some quite simple, but all honouring this great scientist. Apparently Faraday famously eschewed great honours and having things bestowed upon him. Very famously, he may have refused the presidency of the Royal Society itself. He did, yes. Faraday was a very religious man, he was a Sandemanian. Quite often non-conformist sects don't like taking oaths and you had to take an oath as a president of the Royal Society, so that's probably why he didn't. Some good things in there. Oh, this is a beautiful one. This is Keith's favourite. Yeah. Why do you like this one, Keith? It's just very, very well designed. So this is the Royal Janirian Society, so this is an award commemorating another great scientist, Edward Janir here, and his cows because of course he did the cowpox work that led to smallpox vaccination and here's an award to Michael Faraday and just a nice seal on that. That is a nice seal. The thing we really want to show you is on the very first page of this book, we're always fascinated with great scientists about what they did before they were scientists, like Einstein was a patent clerk, and the other one who's really famous is Faraday because he was a bookbinder before he rose to science greatness. So what is this, Keith? This is an indenture for Michael Faraday's apprenticeship as a bookbinder and bookseller and you can probably just see here that he's been apprenticed to George Rebaugh of Blandford Street and this indenture was entered into in the year 1805. How did he escape his indenture as a bookbinder to become a scientist? He started writing to other scientists rather naively. He wrote to Sir Joseph Banks and said, can I have a job please? And Banks just ignored him. He wrote to Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution because he'd been to lectures there. He had a laboratory accident, Davy, and it temporarily blinded him so he needed someone to manage his paperwork and Faraday got the gig as his amanuensis. It didn't last but it did lead on to other things because a job came up at the Royal Institution and Davy remembered him. Now this is where the story is a little bit interesting and there's a little bit of gossip and you know we like all this gossip and behind the scenes stuff because there was a chap named William Payne who was working at the Royal Institution. Basically he had a fight with one of his fellow employees, one of the instrument makers, and there was shouting in a lecture theatre and accusations were being thrown and then there was punches thrown. That's got to be a good lecture hasn't it? Amazing. So anyway, so this guy Payne, who had got the job as an assistant to the chemist, got fired and they're thinking who are we going to get? And obviously at this point Davy has remembered Faraday. Yeah. And here we have an amazing document. What have we got here, Keith? So this is a copy from the minutes of the managers of the Royal Institution. So you can see this particular meeting's held on the 1st of March 1813. So Humphrey Davy has the honour to inform the managers that he has found a person who is desirous to occupy the situation in the institution lately filled by William Payne. Let's not mention the triples. Exactly. His name is Michael Faraday and now that's like Michael Faraday but here he's just a guy that's doing a job. His habits seem good, his disposition active and cheerful. They resolved that Michael Faraday be engaged to fill the situation lately occupied by Mr Payne. This is his big break. He does work for Davy for a bit but then he works for William Thomas Brand. This Brand guy who he worked for, we actually have a portrait of him too so we're going to show you that because Keith's just had it cleaned so he's a little bit proud of it at the moment. He's a bit of a tangential character to our story but seeing you've had the portrait cleaned we may as well show the people at home. I think so yes. You can see he's pretty young and chemistry was a very romantic occupation at this time. They were discovering new elements and really it was the cutting edge of science at this period. I bet he didn't know his newly employed assistant was going to sort of overtake him a little bit in the fame stakes. What have we got here Keith? This is a journal notebook of his day-to-day researches on optical glass for the Royal Society. Now this was a very time-consuming subject. Faraday was not really happy to do this work for the Royal Society. It took him away from the electrical work that he was really interested in but it's nice to see Faraday's meticulous record keeping of building a furnace to manufacture glass at the Royal Institution and the day-to-day records of exactly what he was doing. That's the scientific life if you like but we also have the lecturing life as well which of course Faraday was a part of. It's a caricature so this is the Royal Institution in the early 19th century. Here's a demonstration in progress on gases and you can see Gilray who's the cartoonist is making fun of the people assembled here but here's Humphrey Davy and this is Count Rumford another one of the great leading lights of the Royal Institution and you can see the slightly chaotic scene of them lecturing and doing a demonstration at the Institution. Lots of women present of course because Davy is quite a handsome figure. Was Humphrey Davy considered like a good-looking bloke was he? Oh yeah yeah absolutely. Was he? Yeah he was a regency dandy and of course attracted a big audience just for that reason. Well as you do Brady. The legend at the top is scientific researchers, new discoveries and pneumatics or an experimental lecture on the powers of air and you can see what Gilray thinks the powers of air are and you can see some of the background scenery just peeping through here and this shelf is really special because these aren't just Boyle's grand papers and his inventions these are his personal notebooks these are sort of yeah a very intimate part of him in a way aren't they and they're really interesting to look at. That's right so he would just do day-to-day notes in these things he would do drafts of articles or papers or books that he was working on so it is very much the kind of working practices of Robert Boyle which is rather good I think.