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Material resources may be useful in one’s success; however, it is not them to be sufficient. One’s own resolve and commitment to it is perhaps the most fundamental. Today we tell you about one such person who made his way through mountain-like hurdles and is now one of the shining stars of the world of science (and technology).

Yes. Michael Faraday!

Faraday was born at the home of a poor blacksmith, James Faraday, in England in 1791. His elder brother was also a blacksmith and the family lived a very poor life. At that time his father would also remain sick for long times. His mother was a servant.

Michael Farady

He started school but the poor family couldn’t afford it. When he was 13, his father sent him to a bookshop where he started as delivery boy. Later on he worked as bookbinder in the same shop. Working as bookbinder was a blessing in disguise. He developed a good taste of reading books and when he studied (1) The Encyclopedia Britannica and (2) Conversations on Chemistry, it changed his outlook. Now he started spending part of his small pay in buying chemicals and experimenting what he studied in the books. Once he heard that a famous scientist John Tatum was delivering a series of public lectures on natural science and the fee to attend the classes was one shilling (one-twentieth of a Pound). He hadn’t that shilling which his blacksmith brother paid for him!

William Dance was a customer of the bookshop he worked in. He was a book lover and a good friend of Faraday. He paid for his ticket to hear Sir Humphrey Davy at Royal Society of Sciences. There he took notes of his lectures and produced a 300 pages hand written book and sent it to him. Once Davey hurt himself in an experiment and was unable to write for some time. He employed Faraday as his assistant to take notes for him. This opened the door of success for him. He went on the tour of Europe with Davey and met with the famous scientists of the time. However, he was not much happy because Davey always treated him as his personal servant. Davey’s wife was particularly harsh to him and considered him as low cast.

He has a lot of achievements in the field of science; electromagnetism was one of the most important of them. The unit of electrical capacitance, farad, is named in his honor. He also discovered benzene.

He died in 1867.

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