Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday, a blacksmith's son with little schooling, was apprenticed at 14 to the London bookbinder George Riebau, and read the science books he bound, including an encyclopaedia article on electricity. He attended Humphry Davy's lectures, bound his notes and sent them to Davy, who hired him as an assistant at the Royal Institution in 1813. His discoveries in electromagnetism followed, all without formal mathematics.