Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), American experimenter and statesman. Franklin was the fifteenth child in a family of 17, and had only two years of formal schooling. Despite this, he was a remarkable scientist, making major discoveries in physics. In a classic experiment into the nature of lightning, he flew a kite in a thunderstorm, collecting the static electricity formed in a Leyden Jar (condenser). He also postulated the theory of electic currents as a motion of a charged fluid, and invented bifocal spectacle lenses. He is also famous as one of the founding fathers of the United States of America during the revolution of 1776.