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Any tribute to the genius of Michael Faraday is bound to be incomplete if his popularity and reputation as an outstanding scientific lecturer is not mentioned. He founded the Friday Evening Discourses and Christmas Lectures for younger audiences at the Royal Institution in London in 1826. These lectures still continue to this day and the Christmas lecture series is now televised every year.

These lectures were very popular and Faraday used to derive immense pleasure in communicating the excitement of science to the general public, especially children. He once said, in an interview, “The best members of my audience are children. They just watch and very little escapes their awareness.’’ Incidentally, the current British 20 pound note shows Faraday lecturing in the auditorium of the Royal Institution, and not working in his basement research laboratory.

Charles Dickens had requested Faraday on several occasions to write up his lectures. He wrote to Faraday in May 1850, “It has occurred to me that it would be extremely beneficial to a large class of public to have some account of your lectures you addressed...to children.’’ Faraday never complied being true to his belief that lectures and written material were two completely different things. Later on, fortunately for us, he reluctantly agreed to have a stenographic record of his lectures.The following lecture was the first in the series of Christmas lectures that Faraday gave on candles (1860). William Crookes, who attended the lecture, edited the stenographic record of the lecture.

Biman Nath

Raman Research Institute, Bangalore

The Chemical History of a Candle

Lecture I.–A Candle: The Flame–Its Sources–Structure–Mobility–Brightness

Michael Faraday

I PURPOSE, in return for the honor you do us by coming to see what are our proceedings here, to bring before you, in the course of these lectures, the Chemical History of a Candle. There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come into play and is touched upon in these phenomena. There is no better, there is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.

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