A Life of Discovery #4

Starting in late 1839 Michael Faraday gradually sank into a chronic depression, with physical effects such as vertigo and headaches. His writing letters and in his diary, which had been prolific, slowed. He made no diary entries for 20 months in 1840-42. Managers of the Royal Institution relieved him of his duties there. In 1844, his outlook improved, and he resumed lecturing often. In the 1850’s his health declined again. He had bouts with giddiness, headaches and memory loss, and this took a toll on his quickness of mind. He also had run-ins with church authorities.

The last 10 years of his active professional life were marked by his work as expert adviser to committees and his own interjections into public life, as much as by his scientific ideas. His scientific imagination was sometimes speculative, such as a field theory of magnetism and “gravelectricity”, a relation between gravity and electricity. He wrote a letter to The Times in 1855 to bring attention to the foul state of the River Thames in London. A cause of this was the widespread introduction of the water closet, which resulted in sewage being delivered down a drainage system and emptied into the river. He commented on the poor state of public education in the sciences.

His wife’s health deteriorated, too. Never wealthy and both sickly, Queen Victoria gave them an elegant house in 1858. The couple used it as a respite from the London smoke, but they continued living mainly at the Royal Institute. In 1865 he retired from the Institute. He died in 1867.

This is my last post on this biography of Faraday. To end on a positive note: 1. His was a fascinating and very productive life. 2. The 9th episode of the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, “The Electric Boy” is about Michael Faraday.