Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and Scientist: A Study of Science and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

Geoffrey Cantor's Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and Scientist is a scholarly study, published by Macmillan, of the relationship between Faraday's own Sandemanian Christian faith and his scientific work, a topic earlier biographies of Faraday had often treated only in passing. Cantor is a recognized historian of science with a specific research focus on science and religion, and the book's authority rests on close use of Faraday's own religious writings and Sandemanian church records alongside the standard scientific biographical sources. Its particular contribution is taking Faraday's minority religious community seriously as a real influence on his intellectual outlook rather than as incidental biographical color. Its limit is that it centers specifically on this one dimension of Faraday's life, so a claim about his purely scientific achievements needs a standard history of science source alongside it.