Michael Faraday and the art of lecturing

Abstract

Michael Faraday's contributions to our understanding of electrical and magnetic phenomena are generally well known. Less familiar to many people is the importance of lectures in Faraday's own self-education and his subsequent teaching of others. He possessed an exceptional capacity for research and communication, a quality still evident in The Royal Institution, of which he had been director. This capacity was evident to all, both young and old, in a manner that was strikingly unique. For in his lectures he expressed all of the emotional and intellectual attributes of the natural philosopher possessed of genius. Lectures, for Faraday, reflected an approach to life involving all aspects of the personality in intimate relation to phenomena.