Historical papers

On September 13, 2017, Sir John Meurig Thomas held a lecture in Florence [1]. Thomas, now retired, held the Chair of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, which was created for Michael Faraday. Thomas is renowned for his excellent book Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place (Institute of Physics Publishing, 1991). The book was translated in 2006 in Italian as Michael Faraday La storia romantica di un genio (Firenze University Press) by Luigi Dei, now Rector of the University of Florence, and has been released to the public domain on the occasion of this lecture of September 13 (Figure 1).