Search results for ""Author Frank A. J. L. James""

Since the mid-1820s, a series of lectures has been delivered each year over the Christmas period in the world-famous Faraday Lecture Theatre at The Royal Institution of Great Britain by prominent scientists, addressed specifically to an audience of children. Initially made accessible in book form, the lectures have been nationally televised throughout the UK and distributed worldwide since the 1960s, making them accessible to an even larger audience. The importance of these lectures in promoting science to a broad audience is perhaps best gauged by the fact that an image of one of Faraday's lectures appeared on the Bank of England £20 note in the 1990s.This anthology brings together, for the first time, a carefully chosen selection of 11 lectures from the 1860s to the 1990s. The selection includes lectures by Michael Faraday, arguably the most important and influential 19th-century physicist, and Lawrence Bragg, the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Prize. Through this work, readers will come to grips with the changing nature of popular science lectures over the past 140 years.

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Michael Faraday is one of the best known scientific figures of all time. Known as the discoverer of electro-magnetic induction, the principle behind the electric generator and transformer, he has frequently been portrayed as the 'father' of electrical engineering from whence much of his popular fame derives. This Very Short Introduction dispels the myth that Faraday was an experimental genius working alone in his basement laboratory, making fundamental discoveries that were later applied by others. Instead, it portrays Faraday as a grand theorist of the physical world profoundly influencing later physicists such as Thomson (Kelvin), Maxwell, and Einstein. Frank A.J.L. James explores Faraday's life from his origins in eighteenth-century Westmorland and Yorkshire, his religious and scientific background, to the growth of his fame in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As well as introducing his scientific research, he also puts Faraday in the various institutional contexts in which he lived and worked, including the Royal Institution, the Royal Society, Trinity House, and other agencies of the state. James therefore provides a commentary on the rapidly changing place of science in nineteenth-century society, especially in regards to its role in government and the growth of a professional scientific community. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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Since the mid-1820s, a series of lectures has been delivered each year over the Christmas period in the world-famous Faraday Lecture Theatre at The Royal Institution of Great Britain by prominent scientists, addressed specifically to an audience of children. Initially made accessible in book form, the lectures have been nationally televised throughout the UK and distributed worldwide since the 1960s, making them accessible to an even larger audience. The importance of these lectures in promoting science to a broad audience is perhaps best gauged by the fact that an image of one of Faraday's lectures appeared on the Bank of England £20 note in the 1990s.This anthology brings together, for the first time, a carefully chosen selection of 11 lectures from the 1860s to the 1990s. The selection includes lectures by Michael Faraday, arguably the most important and influential 19th-century physicist, and Lawrence Bragg, the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Prize. Through this work, readers will come to grips with the changing nature of popular science lectures over the past 140 years.

Read more less