Michael Faraday

The son of a blacksmith who became the greatest experimental physicist of the 19th century. Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic induction (1831) — rotating a wire in a magnetic field generates electric current — is the physical principle behind every electric generator and motor ever built. Without it there is no industrial electricity, no radio, no modern world. He declined a knighthood and died poor by choice, preferring to remain plain Michael Faraday.

• Roles: Scientist, Physicist, Chemist