Professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution between 1853 and 1887, the British physicist and mountaineer John Tyndall (1820 93) passionately sought to share scientific understanding with the Victorian public. A lucid and highly regarded communicator, he lectured on such topics as heat, light, magnetism and electricity. In this collection of eight lectures, first published in 1867, Tyndall explains numerous acoustic phenomena for a non-specialist audience. Emphasising the practical nature of scientific enquiry, he describes experiments throughout and includes many illustrations of...

Michael Faraday (1791 -1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include those of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis.Although Faraday received little formal education, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was...