The IEC Academy team is pleased to invite you to the first webinar of the Meet the author series for 2024, where we commemorate the 200th anniversary of Michael Faraday, a big name in the history of electricity, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society:

We will welcome during this webinar conversation Frank James, author of Michael Faraday: A Very Short Introduction, to talk with us about Faraday’s life, work and legacy.

This illustrated talk will trace Faraday’s life from his birth in 1791 to a Sandemanian blacksmith, through his time as an apprentice bookbinder, to his appointment as laboratory assistant in the Royal Institution (in central London) and his subsequent promotion there to Fullerian Professor of Chemistry.

Faraday’s work at the Royal Institution can now be seen as having discovered the principles of the electric motor, transformer and generator. He later formulated the field theory of electro-magnetism which in the hands of Maxwell, Einstein and others became and remains one of the cornerstones of modern physics. By the end of the nineteenth century these discoveries would form the basis of electrical engineering.

However, Faraday during his lifetime also worked to apply his results to practical problems especially in the electrification of lighthouses and in the theory of long-distance telegraph signalling. He was perhaps the most famous man of science during the middle third of the nineteenth century, but following his death in 1867 he was buried with ‘no ceremony’ in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate cemetery in north London.

This webinar will be of interest to anyone curious about the history of electrotechnology, including students currently starting their own engineering journeys.

The date of the online event is February 20, 2024.

Registration