Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867; Physicists -- Great Britain -- Biography
The year of the Great Exhibition was a busy one for Faraday; he was
working in his old accustomed, unremitting manner at his magnetic, and
electric, and general experiments, he was continuing to write those
_Experimental Researches_ which he sent in to the Royal Society, and
upon which rests so large a part of his reputation as a scientist.
He had given up his professorship at Woolwich Academy the previous
year. He was lecturing, however, a good deal, and not alone on his
own account, for during the summer he delivered a lecture on ozone
for his good friend Professor Schönbein. His health, however, was far
from being as good as it had been, and he had to take frequent rests;
so that, although he was working as earnestly and enthusiastically as
ever, it was, so to speak, only intermittently. That the loss of memory
from which he had before suffered was still afflicting him at times,
is made evident by such passages from his letters as the following
pathetic one from a letter to Schönbein: "I have no doubt I answer
your letters very badly; but, my dear friend, _do you remember_ that
_I forget_, and that I can no more help it than a sieve can help the
water running out of it. Still you know me to be your old and obliged
and affectionate friend, and all I can say is, the longer I know
you the more I seem to cling to you. Ever, my dear Schönbein, yours
affectionately."
A pathetic interest attaches to the following reminiscence of Faraday
by his niece (Miss Jane Barnard); she was reading to him an anecdote
of the Duke of Marlborough's intimation to the king that as he felt
that the time when his faculties would fade had arrived he did not wish
again to attend any Council meeting, and that if he should attend he
desired that no heed should be given to anything he said. Faraday after
listening attentively to it, asked Miss Barnard to read that anecdote
to him if at any time she felt that his judgment no longer controlled
his wishes.
So numerous were the honours which were showered upon Michael Faraday
during the last forty years of his life, that to enumerate them would
be as tedious as it would be profitless; suffice it to say that he was
elected a member of all the chief scientific and philosophical bodies
in Europe. Indeed it is said that a Continental Professor addressed a
letter to him as "Professor Michael Faraday, Member of all the learned
Societies of Europe." It is worthy of note, however, that he was
elected a member of the Senate of the University of London, and was
asked to act as examiner for the same body, but declined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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