Faraday with little formal training, was a great experimentalist. He devised a number of unique, inventive ways to test and explore electromagnetic phenomena, and he made several important discoveries regarding the nature of electromagnetism.
His first significant independent discovery, in 1821, was an elegant experiment demonstrating that a magnetic field affects an electric current by causing it to move perpendicular to both the current and the field, and it is his research into electricity for which he is best known. Foremost was his 1831 discovery of electromagnetic induction: that varying magnetic fields induce currents to flow in electric circuits.
These insights later provided a foundation for the work of James Clerk Maxwell, who used his mathematical skill to unify the then disparate science of electromagnetism into a coherent theory, complete with mathematical formalism.
Joseph Henry (1797–1878) helped to develop electromagnetism into a practical science and discovered electromagnetic induction independently of Faraday in the same yea, but failed to publish his work first.
Michael Faraday and experiment on electromagnetism
