Faraday Effect
On September 13th, 1845, Michael Faraday ended his long search to prove that light was affected by magnetism (when inside certain materials). With this discovery, he revealed the link between three of the most fascinating and useful phenomena of nature: light, electricity, and magnetism. Not his most world-changing discovery, but one that he had been searching for many years. They named this the Faraday Effect.
Source: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Season 1, episode 10, "The Electric Boy." Directed by Bill Pope. Written by Ann Druyan and Steven Soter. Aired May 11, 2014, on Fox/National Geographic.
Image by Wellcome Library, London. Under license CC BY 4.0
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!