Cosmos A Spacetime Odyssey

Episode 10 Summary

We command countless legions of electrons. They make possible our way of life, our instantaneous communications with each other and with our robotic emissaries at the solar system’s frontier. Michael Faraday, the man whose genius Albert Einstein revered, was the first to put these invisible armies at our disposal. He lived an against-all-odds-story that cannot help but engage and inspire.

We begin with the mystery that bedeviled Isaac Newton: How do the planets know that the distant Sun is pulling on them? How do all the apples know how to fall?

As if in a dream, we travel to the moment in Einstein’s childhood when his father gave him a simple toy. This small gift prompted his first inkling that “something deeply hidden must lie behind all things.”

Faraday was a child of 19th century poverty, one from whom nothing much was expected. He was a lifelong Christian fundamentalist who had only a brief few months of schooling. He grew up to become the founder of scientific field theory, inventing the motor, the generator, and the dynamo. He is the bridge to our age of communication, including television, iPhones, tablets, and so much else.

Born into a world that expected little of him beyond servitude, he rose to the pinnacle of science and society. His legendary humility moved him to reject Queen Victoria’s repeated offers of knighthood and a final resting place along side Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey.

Faraday’s “All About Eve” relationship to his mentor Sir Humphry Davy, his enduring love for his wife Sarah, his invention of public science education for children, his battle with memory loss and mental illness, and the dramatic discovery he made in old age despite these challenges, are all part of the romance of this remarkable life.

Along the way we meet the (non-human) beings, who discovered magnetic fields long before Faraday. When Faraday attempted to prove his greatest insight, he hit a wall – due to his lack of
formal education he couldn’t do the math. This is where the aristocratic young mathematician James Clerk Maxwell heroically saves the day. Maxwell translates Faraday’s plainspoken words into the mathematical equations that made modern communications possible. Faraday’s embrace of Maxwell’s work continues the theme of mentoring at its best.