Michael Faraday
22 September, 1971
Full Name=Michael Faraday; Profession=English physicist and chemist, experimental scientist whose pioneering work in electromagnetism and electrochemistry laid the foundations for modern electrical engineering and physical chemistry; Nationality=English (British); Born=22 September 1791; Birthplace= Newington Butts, Surrey, England, a working-class area in south London; Generation=Industrial Revolution and early Victorian-era scientific generation of 19th-century Britain, active at the Royal Institution of Great Britain during the explosion of electrical technology; Chinese Zodiac=Pig (1791 is a Year of the Pig in the traditional Chinese calendar); Zodiac Sign=Virgo (the Sun is in Virgo for births between August 23 and September 22); Age in 2026= Would be 235 years old in 2026, though he died at age 75 in 1867; marital status= Married to Sarah Barnard from June 1821 until his death, in a close lifelong partnership; Children=None, the couple did not have any children; Description=Michael Faraday was born into a poor family as the son of a blacksmith and received only a basic formal education, yet through self-directed study and apprenticeship as a bookbinder he rose to become one of the most influential experimental scientists in history, discovering electromagnetic induction, formulating the laws of electrolysis, exploring diamagnetism, and introducing key concepts such as lines of force that profoundly shaped James Clerk Maxwell’s later field theory and the development of electric motors, transformers, and generators; he worked for decades at the Royal Institution in London, delivering famous public lectures—including his “Christmas Lectures” for young audiences—that inspired generations, and remained personally modest and deeply religious despite international fame and honours such as having the SI unit of capacitance, the farad, named after him; his experiments turned electricity from a laboratory curiosity into a practical technology that underpins modern power systems and electronics, making him central to the transition into the electrified industrial world and earning him a reputation as a genius of practical physics and chemistry whose legacy reaches into almost every contemporary device that uses electromagnetic principles; Cause of Death= Natural causes followed a prolonged decline marked by dementia and senility; after he retired from most scientific work in the 1850s as his health failed, he died peacefully at his residence at Hampton Court, Middlesex, on 25 August 1867 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery beside his wife, Sarah.