Albemarle Street

Sir John Meurig Thomas is Former Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory, London, and former Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry and Professorial Fellow of King's College, University of Cambridge. John Meurig Thomas was knighted for services to chemistry and the popularisation of science. His biography of Michael Faraday has been translated into Japanese, Chinese and Italian. He has received numerous international and national awards for his work, including the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his contributions to green chemistry and clean technology. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and of the Swedish and Russian Academies of Sciences.

• 1: Setting the Scene 2: Count Rumford's Remarkable Creation in Albemarle Street 3: Sir Humphry Davy: Natural Philosopher, Discourser, Inventor, Poet and Man of Action 4: Michael Faraday: Paragon 5: The Incredible Lord Rayleigh 6: The Fuel Cell: W. R. Grove's Discourse in 1843 and Francis Bacon's in 1960 7: Molecular Biology, and the Crucial Role Played by the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory in its Birth 8: Modern Diagnostic Medicine: Memorable Discourse in 1986 by Andrew on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) 9: Egyptomania at the Royal Institution: Howard Carter's Discourse on <"The Tomb of Tut-Ank-Amun from Ante-room to Burial Chamber> " (1925) 10: Peter Mark Roget: Facilitator of the Writing of Good English and two of his Distinguished Successors as the Fullerian Professor of Physiology (T. H. Huxley and Peter Medawar) 11: The Most Beautiful Experiment in Physics: Candidates from the Royal Institution and Elsewhere 12: The Uniqueness of the RI: George Porter, my Predecessor, as its Director Afterword

The publisher spared no expense in obtaining high--quality color reproductions of portraits and photos relating to TRI. Thomas intended the book as a popular treatment rather than a scholarly history. Although the text is annotated by footnotes, most of the material is drawn from secondary sources such as obituaries, and historians will find it more entertaining than illuminating. That said, for conveying what TRI is all about and documenting the scope and variety of famous people who passed through its doors over the years, this book has no peer.