Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) is the greatest experimental physicist who barely knew any mathematics. Born poor, the son of a blacksmith, he left school at thirteen and became a bookbinder's apprentice — where, instead of just binding the science books, he read them. He talked his way into a job washing bottles for the famous chemist Humphry Davy, and rose to eclipse his mentor entirely.

He electrified the world — literally

Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic induction — that a changing magnetic field pushes a current through a wire — is the principle behind every electric generator and transformer on the planet. Faraday's law quantifies it, and it is, quite literally, where your electricity comes from. He also built the first electric motor, discovered the laws of electrolysis, and gave us the mental picture of invisible fields and lines of force filling space — an idea so powerful that James Clerk Maxwell later turned it into the equations of electromagnetism.

'What use is a newborn baby?'

Faraday stayed humble to the end. He twice declined a knighthood and turned down the Presidency of the Royal Society, preferring to remain "plain Mr Faraday." When a politician (the story goes, William Gladstone) asked what possible use his curious electrical experiments could be, Faraday shot back: "Why sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it." And when pressed on the point of a feeble new effect, he reputedly replied, "What use is a newborn baby?" That newborn grew up to power the modern world.