Uneducated Scientist

During the last 400 years, most inventions and discoveries have been made by scientist using mathematics or applying scientific laws. However, one great British scientist, Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867) did not make use of mathematics. Faraday was the son of a poor blacksmith and received no education beyond reading and writing. Fortunately, Faraday was very inquisitive and taught himself all about science. He was also imaginative. His inquisitiveness led him to investigate electric current which was new to science in the early 1800s. Although unable to express his work in mathematical terms, Faraday used his imagination to picture how electricity works. He visualized that a wire carrying an electric current is surrounded by lines of magnetic forve produced by the flow of the current. He used this idea to find out how electricity and magnetism are linked. This lead him to build the first working model of an electric generator. He then went on to show how electricity affects chemical substances. These discoveries enables us to generate and use electric currents, and are among the most important ever made. Yet they were made bya man who today would bot be able to pass science examinations.