Humphry Davy

Biography

Sir Humphry revelled in his status, as his lectures gathered many spectators. Davy became well known due to his experiments with the physiological action of some nitrogen trichloride.^[3] In 1801 he was nominated professor at the Royal Institution of Great Britain and Fellow of the Royal Society, over which he would later preside. He later invented the Davy lamp which was a great and well-known success.

Retirement and further work

 

 

In 1812 he was knighted, gave a farewell lecture to the Royal Institution, and married a wealthy widow, Jane Apreece. While generally acknowledged as being faithful to his wife, their relationship was stormy and in his later years Davy travelled to continental Europe alone. In October 1813 he and his wife, accompanied by iodine. The party left Paris on December 29, travelling south through Montpellier and Nice and then to Italy.

After passing through Genoa, they went to Florence, where, in a series of experiments starting on Sunday March 27, Davy, with Faraday's assistance, succeeded in using the sun's rays to ignite carbon. Davy's party continued on to Rome, and also visited Naples and Mount Vesuvius. By the June 17, they were in Milan, where they met Alessandro Volta, and continued north to Geneva. They returned to Italy via Munich and Innsbruck, passed though Venice and returned to Rome. Their plans to travel to Greece and Constantinople (Istanbul) were abandoned after Napoleon's escape from Elba, and they returned to England.

Davy lamp

  After his return to England in 1815, Davy went on to produce the Davy lamp which was widely used by miners. Although the idea of the safety lamp had already been demonstrated by William Reid Clanny and an engineer, George Stephenson, his use of wire gauze to prevent the spread of flame was quickly copied by both of these inventors in their later designs.

Discovery of chlorine

He also showed that Lavoisier's definition of acids as compounds of oxygen.

Acid-base studies

In 1815 Davy suggested that Bases were substances that reacted with acids to form salts and water. These definitions worked well for most of the nineteenth century.

In 1818, he was awarded a baronetcy, and two years later he became President of the Royal Society.

Death

 

Davy died in Switzerland in 1829, his various inhalations of chemicals finally taking their toll on his health. He is buried in the Plain Palais Cemetery in Geneva.

Davy's laboratory assistant, Michael Faraday, went on to enhance Davy's work and in the end became more famous and influential – to such an extent that Davy is supposed to have claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery. However, he later accused Faraday of plagiarism, causing Faraday (the first Fullerian Professor of Chemistry) to cease all research in electromagnetism until his mentor's death.

Legacy and memorials

 

• A lunar crater is named after Sir Humphry Davy. It has a diameter of 34 km and coordinates of 11.8S, 8.1W.

• In Penzance in Cornwall, Davy's hometown, there is a statue of him in front of the imposing Market House, now owned by Lloyds TSB, at the top of Market Jew Street, the town's main high street. There also is a secondary school in Penzance named Humphry Davy School. Like Isaac Newton, Davy is remembered in his hometown by a pub. The Sir Humphry Davy pub is located in Penzance opposite the Greenmarket at the end of Market Jew Street.

• Davy was the subject of the first ever clerihew.

• A satellite of the University of Sheffield at Golden Smithies Lane in Wath upon Dearne (Manvers) is called Humphry Davy House and is currently home to the School of Nursing and Midwifery, until April 2009.

Writings by Davy

See Fullmer's work for a full list of Davy's articles.^[4] Davy's books are as follows:

• Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, Bristol: Biggs and Cottle, 1800
• Elements of Chemical Philosophy, London: Johnson and Co., 1812
• Elements Of Agricultural Chemistry In A Course Of Lectures, London, Longman, 1813
• The Papers of Sir H. Davy, Newcastle: Emerson Charnley, 1816 (on Davy's safety lamp)
• Discourses to the Royal Society, London: John Murray, 1827
• Salmonia: Or Days of Fly Fishing, London: John Murray, 1828
• Consolations in Travel: Or the Last Days of a Philosopher, London: John Murray, 1830

References

1. ^ Berzelius, J. J. (1818). Traite de chimie, trans. Jourdian and Esslinger, vol. 1, pg. 164. 1st Swedish ed. (Larbok i kemien), Stockholm, this ed., 8 vol., Paris (1829-33).
2. ^ Levere, Trevor H. (1971). Affinity and Matter – Elements of Chemical Philosophy 1800-1865. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers. ISBN 2881245838. 
3. ^ Humphry Davy (1813). "On a New Detonating Compound". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 103: 1-7.
4. ^ Fullmer, June Z. (1969). Sir Humphry Davy's Published Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Further reading

• Davy, John, The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, London: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1839-40
• Treener, Anne, The Mercurial Chemist, A Life of Sir Humphry Davy London: Methuen, 1963
• Hartley, Harold, Humphry Davy, London: Nelson, 1966
• Fullmer, June Z., Sir Humphry Davy's Published Works, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969
• Knight, David, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992
• Lamont-Brown, Raymond, Humphry Davy, Life Beyond the Lamp, Sutton Publishing, 2004
• Harold Hartley (1960). "The Wilkins Lecture. Sir Humphry Davy, Bt., P.R.S. 1778-1829". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 255 (1281): 153-180.

Awards
Preceded by Smithson Tennant	Copley Medal 1805	Succeeded by Thomas Andrew Knight

Persondata
NAME	Davy, Sir Humphry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Physicist and Chemist
DATE OF BIRTH	December 17 1778(1778-12-17)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Penzance, Cornwall, United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH	May 29 1829
PLACE OF DEATH	Geneva, Switzerland