The RSC Faraday prize lecture of 1989 on platinum.

In 1861, Michael Faraday gave one of his last Friday Evening Discourses at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, on platinum, which he described as "this beautiful, magnificent and valuable metal". More than a hundred and twenty years later (in 1989), the author re-enacted, at the Royal Institution, many of the demonstrations that Faraday carried out in his memorable Discourse. This article outlines many of Faraday's views on, and experiments with, platinum.

The extraordinary impact of Michael Faraday on chemistry and related subjects.

Biographers of Michael Faraday, as well as many dictionaries of science, often describe him as a physicist, which he certainly was. But he was also an astonishingly effective chemist: in fact, he was the Fullerian Professor of Chemistry (at the Royal Institution, RI) from 1834 until the time of his death in August, 1867. To mark the sesquicentenary of his passing, this editorial, by one of his distant successors as Director and Fullerian Professor at the RI, focuses on Faraday's output and influence as a scientist.