Experimental Researches in ElectricityMichael Faraday

Faraday published the Experimental Researches in Electricity as a long sequence of papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, beginning in 1831 and later collected in three volumes (1839–1855). The series opens with electromagnetic induction: a changing magnetic field produces an electric current in a nearby conductor. Later series establish the identity of electricities from different sources, the laws of electrolysis, the concept of lines of force, and diamagnetism.

Faraday works almost entirely by experiment. He develops a physical picture of the field as a region of stress in space. Maxwell later put that picture into equations. The researches convert electricity from a collection of separate effects into a single science linked to magnetism and chemistry.