Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday is known as the father of electrical engineering because of his numerous contributions to the growth of the branch. If it wasn't for this man we wouldn't be having our induction generators, electrical energy meters, or even transformers or anything that works on the principle of induction.

This Michael Faraday was a third out of the four children in his family, received fairly little amount of education. But he had an enthusiasm to read while he was under the apprenticeship under a bookbinder. Then later on he worked at a chemistry lab, then in a physics lab. While working in the physics lab he accidentally noticed how a shock was felt when he moved a coil through the magnetic field, later the phenomenon was known as Mutual Induction (electromagnetism and Self-induction were known at the time ). Faraday made the first model of a generator, (which we learn in the seventh grade).

The unit of Capacitance is given as farad in honour of Faraday, as per Maxwell's words "Faraday was a mathematician of a very high level from whom the future mathematicians will learn much valuable and fertile methods".

Mr. Faraday also had contribution in chemistry discovering two new elements Carbon and Chlorine. He also developed a rough model of a Bunsen burner, compounds like Benzene. He has contributed much towards electrolysis and the properties of colloids.

Coming to the contributions in electricity and magnetism, he was the first one to notice diamagnetism.

Faraday also discovered that the plane of polarization of linearly polarized light can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the direction which the light is moving. This is now termed the Faraday effect. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light".