The Royal Institution: Its Founder and First Professors

The Royal Institution was something new in the world: a temple of science open to the public, where brilliant men performed experiments on stage and ignited popular fascination with the natural world. Bence Jones, who knew Michael Faraday personally, traces the institution's improbable origins through its founder Count Rumford, a flamboyant American-born physicist expelled from Bavaria for espionage, and its two greatest professors: Sir Humphry Davy, who discovered five new elements before turning thirty, and Faraday, the self-educated son of a blacksmith who revolutionized our understanding of electricity. Written in 1871 while witnesses to these achievements still lived, this book captures a pivotal moment when science ceased being the private pursuit of gentlemen and became a public spectacle with the power to transform industry and society. It will appeal to anyone fascinated by the history of science, Victorian England, or the eccentric geniuses who built the modern world.