Michael Faraday — "I have often regretted that I was not able to pursue a more regular course of st…"
I have often regretted that I was not able to pursue a more regular course of study.
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More from Michael Faraday
"All this is a dream. Still, examine it by a few experiments."
"Work, finish, publish."
"The true scientist is a man who is always learning, and never assumes that he knows everything."
"I have lived to see the day when electricity is no longer a toy, but a powerful agent in the service of mankind."
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Details
Attributed, reflecting his humble beginnings and self-education.
Date: Mid 19th Century (approx.)
EducationalVerification
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The speaker admits disappointment at never having followed a formal, structured education. He wishes he had been able to learn systematically through school or university, progressing step by step through organized subjects, rather than piecing knowledge together on his own. It is a candid acknowledgment that self-teaching, however successful, left gaps he felt throughout his career and still wished he could have filled.
Relevance to Michael Faraday
Faraday left school at thirteen and apprenticed to a bookbinder, reading the volumes he stitched. He had almost no mathematics, which limited how he expressed his field theories and forced Maxwell to later formalize them. Despite discovering electromagnetic induction, the dynamo, and diamagnetism, he remained self-conscious about his lack of formal training, declining honors like the Royal Society presidency partly from this enduring sense of educational inadequacy.
The era
In early-19th-century Britain, science was shifting from gentleman-amateur pursuit to professional discipline requiring university credentials, especially in mathematics at Cambridge. The Royal Institution where Faraday worked was one of few places a working-class man could do research. Class barriers meant Oxford and Cambridge were largely closed to dissenters and the poor, making Faraday's rise exceptional yet leaving him acutely aware of what a Cambridge wrangler's rigorous training offered that he lacked.
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