Magnet Academy: Michael Faraday

A self-educated man with a brilliant mind, Michael Faraday was born in a hardscrabble neighborhood in London. Through the combination of insatiable curiosity and a powerful will to succeed, he transcended his austere beginnings to conduct some of the most groundbreaking work of his day, discovering the principles that lay behind two key instruments of applied electricity: electromagnetic induction, which led to the transformer, and magneto-electric induction, which led to the generator. For these contributions to science (and many others), Faraday is one of the most revered scientists of the 19th century.