On Michael Faraday and Wally Rippel

It is the birthday of Michael Faraday, whose discovery of the relationship between electricity and magnetism in the 1830s remains to this day one of the most important contributions to the well-being of humankind.

By coincidence, I’m having lunch tomorrow with my friend Wally Rippel (pictured), an extremely senior scientist in this space. In 1968, Wally represented Caltech in the Sunracer project, pitting his school against MIT in a contest to determine who could build the better electric vehicle. 46 years later, Wally’s still making important refinements in the conversion of electrical to mechanical energy and vice versa.