Faraday's Diary

Abstract

IT has now been announced that, to mark the forthcoming centenary of the discovery of electromagnetic induction, the Managers of the Royal Institution have resolved to publish a document of exceptional scientific interest and importance, Faraday's “Diary”. It may therefore be opportune to give some particulars of the manuscript and of how it came to be written. Scientific men have been aware of its existence for upwards of sixty years, and Bence Jones, Silvanus Thompson, and other writers on the life of Faraday have consulted it for material and have quoted passages from it in their writings; but few of the present generation, to whom the name of Faraday has become a household word, can be fully aware of the nature and extent, the scientific and biographical significance, and the extraordinary interest of these hitherto unpublished papers.