Sir John Meurig Thomas, one of the world’s leading scholars, spoke about the accomplishments and lives of Benjamin Franklin and Michael Faraday to launch the University’s Edward G. Jefferson Lecture Series.
Thomas, who was knighted in 1991 for “services to chemistry and the popularization of science,” spoke to a full house Oct. 13 in Mitchell Hall.

The Jefferson Lecture is a new, annual event that will bring nationally and internationally recognized academics to Delaware to discuss issues of global importance in science, education and policy. The series was established in May to honor the former chairman and chief executive officer of the DuPont Co. and member of the UD Board of Trustees, who died in February.

In his lecture, Thomas referred to Faraday, the 19th-century English chemist and physicist, as his ideal and noted that Faraday greatly admired Franklin. “In the contemporary careers of Franklin and Faraday, there are many similarities,” he said. “Each was one of the most admired men in the Western world, and each is associated with the most spectacular and fabled experiments in science.”

Franklin died in 1790, just a year before Faraday was born, and Thomas said Faraday often quoted him. Both men’s research centered on electricity. Franklin defined the nature of electricity and made a battery, and Faraday found that matter and electricity are inextricably connected, he said.

“Each man was driven by intrinsic curiosity,” Thomas said. “Each believed in intellectual honesty and in the importance of evidence.”

But, there were differences, he said: “Faraday lacked Franklin’s public persona. He was retiring, almost reclusive; he shunned socializing, despite the fact that after discovering electromagnetic induction, his lectures were attended by notables of his day like Charles Darwin.”

Scientific inquiry was uppermost in the minds of both men, despite their different personalities, Thomas said.
Franklin had the daring to send up a kite in order to prove lightning is electricity. After his experiments with lightning revealed the nature of electricity, Franklin went on to invent the lightning rod to protect people and property from harm.

Faraday and Franklin were so accomplished, Thomas said, because both men had unquenchable curiosity and a passion for clarity and believed there was an answer to all questions that could be found through experimentation. “We can learn lessons from these people,” he said. “Studying the lives and works of great people can help guide us.”

Thomas is honorary professor of solid-state chemistry in the Department of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge and professor emeritus of chemistry at the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.