Michael Faraday — "I have been so absorbed in my experiments that I have forgotten to eat and sleep…"
I have been so absorbed in my experiments that I have forgotten to eat and sleep.
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Details
Attributed, similar to Pasteur, highlighting his intense dedication.
Date: Mid 19th Century (approx.)
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Found in 1 providers: grok
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The speaker is describing total immersion in work to the point where basic physical needs like eating and sleeping slip from awareness. It captures that state of deep concentration where time and bodily signals fade because the mind is completely captured by what it is investigating. It is an admission of obsession, but framed as devotion rather than neglect, treating the research itself as more pressing than personal maintenance.
Relevance to Michael Faraday
Faraday was famously monkish in his habits, living modestly at the Royal Institution where he also worked, and his notebooks record experiments run in relentless sequences for days. His discoveries in electromagnetic induction, the dynamo, and benzene came from patient, exhausting bench work rather than theory alone. Deeply religious as a Sandemanian, he treated investigation of nature as a form of worship, which made sustained self-forgetful labor feel natural to him.
The era
Faraday worked in early-to-mid 1800s London, when science was shifting from gentleman-amateur pursuit to full-time professional vocation centered on institutions like the Royal Institution. The Industrial Revolution was hungry for practical results from electricity and chemistry, and researchers were expected to deliver public lectures, patents, and demonstrations. Without electric lighting, refrigeration, or labor laws, a researcher who skipped meals and slept in the lab was a recognizable, even admired figure of the age.
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