Firenze University Press www.fupress.com/substantia Historical Article Michael Faraday: a virtuous life dedicated to science Citation: F. Bagnoli and R. Livi (2018) Michael Faraday: a virtuous life dedi- cated to science. Substantia 2(1): 121-134. doi: 10.13128/substantia-45 Franco Bagnoli and Roberto Livi Copyright: © 2018 F. Bagnoli and Department of Physics and Astronomy and CSDC, University of Florence R. Livi. This is an open access, peer- E-mail:
[email protected] reviewed article published by Firenze University Press (http://www.fupress. com/substantia) and distribuited under the terms of the Creative Commons Abstract. We review the main aspects of the life of Michael Faraday and some of his Attribution License, which permits main scientific discoveries. Although these aspects are well known and covered in unrestricted use, distribution, and many extensive treatises, we try to illustrate in a concise way the two main “wonders” reproduction in any medium, provided of Faraday’s life: that the son of a poor blacksmith in the Victorian age was able to the original author and source are credited. become the director the Royal Institution and member of the Royal Society, still keep- ing a honest and “virtuous” moral conduct, and that Faraday’s approach to many top- Data Availability Statement: All rel- ics, but mainly to electrochemistry and electrodynamics, has paved the way to the evant data are within the paper and its modern (atomistic and field-based) view of physics, only relying on experiments and Supporting Information files. intuition. We included many excerpts from Faraday’s letters and laboratory notes in order to let the readers have a direct contact with this scientist.