Michael Faraday, Man Of Science

“Some of Faraday’s earliest experiments, as was incidentally mentioned in an earlier part of this little book, were in connection with chlorine, etc., and then on the making of glass for optical purposes; and it was not, indeed, until he had been at the Institution for about eighteen years that he really entered with any degree of success into his electrical research. Here it is of interest to note a remark which he once made in this connection to the effect that it requires twenty years of work to make a man in physical science, the whole of the previous period being one of infancy. Once, however, he had reached this scientific manhood his work was done with remarkable rapidity ; he would, once on the track, so to speak, of a discover y, mature it in a space of time so short as to be nothing less than mar vellous; and one after another of his “experimental researches” were carried out, completed, described, and the resultant paper submitted to the Royal Society with a rapidity, and at the same time with an accuracy which has never been equalled.”