Anyone fortunate enough, as I was, to spend ten years at the Royal Institution carrying out laser research and lecturing for the young can testify that to this day Faraday’s spirit exudes from every pore of the Institution. In 1980-9, the building had a faded elegance redolent of that in Faraday’s time. There was much dust in the atmosphere, which made tuning our lasers very difficult—students grappling with this task were comforted with the thought that some of the dust may have been Faraday’s own skin cells! We viewed our efforts with that most modern of light sources as being in direct descent from Faraday’s own original light source, the candle. It is wonderful that Faraday’s Chemical History of a Candle is to be re-issued, not only as an historical document, but also as a lesson in how to communicate science. I have lectured well over one hundred times in that historic theatre, and gave four Friday Evening Discourses, and (jointly) the 1987-8 BBC-TV Christmas Lectures on ‘Crystals and Lasers’. Every time one entered the theatre to begin a lecture, one felt a tension best described as having Faraday looking over one’s shoulder criticizing delivery and content. His collected writings, published as Advice to Lecturers, still good today, was always available to Royal Institution lecturers, and provided sobering reading if one’s prepared lecture did not conform with Faraday’s views on how it should be done:
An experimental lecturer should attend very carefully to the choice he may make of experiments for the illustration of his subject. They should be important . . . clear . . . rather approach to simplicity, and explain the established principles of the subject, than be elaborate . . .
A flame should be lighted at the commencement, and kept alive with unremitting splendour to the end.
Readers of this new edition of Chemical History of a Candle will find a text that amply demonstrates Faraday’s capabilities to engage and enthuse an audience; a process as necessary today as it was then. Enjoy it!
David Phillips
Professor Emeritus, Imperial College London
President, Royal Society of Chemistry
Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer, 1987–8
11 January 2011