The rakish looking fellow above is one Michael Faraday, born this day 1791 in Southwark, London. I have to admit that Faraday's hero blog poses some problems. Problems that I have faced before, and have gotten around. The problem is that he did so fucking MUCH good scientific work how best to boil it down, and give a decent account of his life. Suffice to say, I have had this issue before, and I am sure I will have it again. I am quite sure any fool who wants to can go to the Wikipedia page and spend a good half an hour reading all about M. Faraday without me help. I could just cut and paste large swathes of the page here for my loyal fan base to peruse, but that is intellectually dishonest. That is a particularly heinous crime, because Faraday was extremely intellectually honest. He has been referred to in the history of science as the greatest experimentalist ever born. Pretty high praise in the science world, especially coming from a bunch of other scientists (they seem to be a argumentative lot). It was his experiments with electro-magnets, and with DC current that lead to electricity becoming a viable form of technology. He invented an early form of the Bunsen burner, and discover numerous other scientific things that I have no clue as to their meaning. He married once, and had no children, and was a member of some crazy Christian subset, but that does not detract from the man's achievements. I would suspect that the best advice he ever gave was simply this "Work. Finish. Publish." From what I know of the science world today, that advice pretty much sums up what a scientist should be doing in today's world as well. So for being the fellow that helped make it possible for me to flip a switch, and volia! Let there be light, Michael Faraday (September 22nd, 1791-August 25th, 1867 at the age of 76), you are my hero of the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment