Michael Faraday

Faraday, Michael (1791–1867), English chemist and physicist, pupil and successor of H. Davy at the Royal Institution. He discovered benzene (1825), first demonstrated electromagnetic induction and invented the dynamo (1831), and, with his concept of magnetic lines of force, laid the foundations of classical field theory later built upon by J. Clerk Maxwell. He discovered the laws of electrolysis that bear his name and demonstrated a connection between light and magnetism. The Faraday effect is the rotation of the plane of polarization produced when plane-polarized light is passed through a substance in a magnetic field, the light traveling in a direction parallel to the lines of force. For a given substance, the rotation is proportional to the thickness traversed by the light and to the magnetic field strength. Faradays' laws state that in the process of electrolytic changes, equal quantities of electricity charge or discharge equivalent quantities of ions at each electrode.

See also: Electrolysis; Electromagnetism.