Faraday: The 1840s and field theory

In the 1840s Faraday argued against two major theories of 19th-century physics - that matter was ultimately divisible into chemical atoms, and that light travelled by flowing through a substance called the aether. Looking for alternative explanations helped him towards his discovery of the magneto-optical effect and diamagnetism in 1845 and culminated in his establishment of the field theory of electromagnetism which, when mathematised by William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and James Clark Maxwell, became (and remains) one of the cornerstones of physics.

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