67 Facts About Humphry Davy

1.

Humphry Davy is remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine.

2.

Humphry Davy is credited to have been the first to discover clathrate hydrates in his lab.

3.

Humphry Davy was a baronet, President of the Royal Society, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, Fellow of the Geological Society, and a member of the American Philosophical Society.

4.

Three years later, his family moved to Varfell, near Ludgvan, and subsequently, in term-time Humphry Davy boarded with John Tonkin, his godfather and later his guardian.

5.

In 1797, after he learned French from a refuge priest, Humphry Davy read Lavoisier's Traite elementaire de chimie.

6.

Humphry Davy's poems reflected his views on both his career and his perception of certain aspects of human life.

7.

Humphry Davy wrote on human endeavours and aspects of life like death, metaphysics, geology, natural theology and chemistry.

8.

John Ayrton Paris remarked that poems written by the young Humphry Davy "bear the stamp of lofty genius".

9.

Humphry Davy's first preserved poem entitled The Sons of Genius is dated 1795 and marked by the usual immaturity of youth.

10.

Humphry Davy permitted Davy to use his laboratory and possibly directed his attention to the floodgates of the port of Hayle, which were rapidly decaying as a result of the contact between copper and iron under the influence of seawater.

11.

Humphry Davy was acquainted with the Wedgwood family, who spent a winter at Penzance.

12.

In 1802, Humphry Davy had what was then the most powerful electrical battery in the world at the Royal Institution.

13.

The arrangement agreed between Dr Beddoes and Humphry Davy was generous, and enabled Humphry Davy to give up all claims on his paternal property in favour of his mother.

14.

Humphry Davy did not intend to abandon the medical profession and was determined to study and graduate at Edinburgh, but he soon began to fill parts of the institution with voltaic batteries.

15.

Humphry Davy threw himself energetically into the work of the laboratory and formed a long romantic friendship with Mrs Anna Beddoes, the novelist Maria Edgeworth's sister, who acted as his guide on walks and other fine sights of the locality.

16.

Humphry Davy was able to take his own pulse as he staggered out of the laboratory and into the garden, and he described it in his notes as "threadlike and beating with excessive quickness".

17.

In February 1801 Humphry Davy was interviewed by the committee of the Royal Institution, comprising Joseph Banks, Benjamin Thompson and Henry Cavendish.

18.

Humphry Davy wrote to Davies Gilbert on 8 March 1801 about the offers made by Banks and Thompson, a possible move to London and the promise of funding for his work in galvanism.

19.

The next day Davy left Bristol to take up his new post at the Royal Institution, it having been resolved 'that Humphry Davy be engaged in the service of the Royal Institution in the capacity of assistant lecturer in chemistry, director of the chemical laboratory, and assistant editor of the journals of the institution, and that he be allowed to occupy a room in the house, and be furnished with coals and candles, and that he be paid a salary of 100l.

20.

On 25 April 1801, Humphry Davy gave his first lecture on the relatively new subject of 'Galvanism'.

21.

Humphry Davy's lectures included spectacular and sometimes dangerous chemical demonstrations along with scientific information, and were presented with considerable showmanship by the young and handsome man.

22.

Humphry Davy included both poetic and religious commentary in his lectures, emphasizing that God's design was revealed by chemical investigations.

23.

In November 1804 Humphry Davy became a Fellow of the Royal Society, over which he would later preside.

24.

Humphry Davy was one of the founding members of the Geological Society in 1807 and was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1810 and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822.

25.

In June 1802 Humphry Davy published in the first issue of the Journals of the Royal Institution of Great Britain his An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver.

26.

Humphry Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis using the voltaic pile to split common compounds and thus prepare many new elements.

27.

Humphry Davy went on to electrolyse molten salts and discovered several new metals, including sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements known as the alkali metals.

28.

Humphry Davy discovered potassium in 1807, deriving it from caustic potash.

29.

Humphry Davy managed to successfully repeat these experiments almost immediately and expanded Berzelius' method to strontites and magnesia.

30.

Humphry Davy noted that while these amalgams oxidised in only a few minutes when exposed to air they could be preserved for lengthy periods of time when submerged in naphtha before becoming covered with a white crust.

31.

On 30 June 1808 Humphry Davy reported to the Royal Society that he had successfully isolated four new metals which he named barium, calcium, strontium and magnium which were subsequently published in the Philosophical Transactions.

32.

The observations gathered from these experiments led to Humphry Davy isolating boron in 1809.

33.

Humphry Davy showed that the acid of Scheele's substance, called at the time oxymuriatic acid, contained no oxygen.

34.

In 1810, chlorine was given its current name by Humphry Davy, who insisted that chlorine was in fact an element.

35.

Humphry Davy seriously injured himself in a laboratory accident with nitrogen trichloride.

36.

Humphry Davy's accident induced him to hire Michael Faraday as a co-worker, particularly for assistance with handwriting and record keeping.

37.

Humphry Davy had recovered from his injuries by April 1813.

38.

In 1812, Humphry Davy was knighted and gave up his lecturing position at the Royal Institution.

39.

Humphry Davy was given the title of Honorary Professor of Chemistry.

40.

Humphry Davy gave a farewell lecture to the Institution, and married a wealthy widow, Jane Apreece.

41.

Humphry Davy then published his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, part 1, volume 1, though other parts of this title were never completed.

42.

Humphry Davy made notes for a second edition, but it was never required.

43.

Humphry Davy's party sailed from Plymouth to Morlaix by cartel, where they were searched.

44.

Humphry Davy wrote a paper for the Royal Society on the element, which is called iodine.

45.

Humphry Davy's party did not meet Napoleon in person, but they did visit the Empress Josephine de Beauharnais at the Chateau de Malmaison.

46.

Humphry Davy's party continued to Rome, where he undertook experiments on iodine and chlorine and on the colours used in ancient paintings.

47.

Humphry Davy visited Naples and Mount Vesuvius, where he collected samples of crystals.

48.

The Revd Dr Robert Gray of Bishopwearmouth in Sunderland, founder of the Society for Preventing Accidents in Coalmines, had written to Humphry Davy suggesting that he might use his 'extensive stores of chemical knowledge' to address the issue of mining explosions caused by firedamp, or methane mixed with oxygen, which was often ignited by the open flames of the lamps then used by miners.

49.

Humphry Davy conceived of using an iron gauze to enclose a lamp's flame, and so prevent the methane burning inside the lamp from passing out to the general atmosphere.

50.

Humphry Davy refused to patent the lamp, and its invention led to his being awarded the Rumford medal in 1816.

51.

Humphry Davy experimented on fragments of the Herculaneum papyri before his departure to Naples in 1818.

52.

Humphry Davy decided to renounce further work on the papyri because 'the labour, in itself difficult and unpleasant, been made more so, by the conduct of the persons at the head of this department in the Museum'.

53.

Between 1823 and 1825, Humphry Davy, assisted by Michael Faraday, attempted to protect the copper by electrochemical means.

54.

Humphry Davy attached to the copper sacrificial pieces of zinc or iron, which provided cathodic protection to the host metal.

55.

Humphry Davy conducted a number of tests in Portsmouth Dockyard, which led to the Navy Board adopting the use of Humphry Davy's "protectors".

56.

Humphry Davy's scheme was seen as a public failure, despite success of the corrosion protection as such.

57.

Elections took place on St Andrew's Day and Humphry Davy was elected on 30 November 1820.

58.

Humphry Davy was the outstanding scientist but some fellows did not approve of his popularising work at the Royal Institution.

59.

Humphry Davy was only 41, and reformers were fearful of another long presidency.

60.

Humphry Davy spent much time juggling the factions but, as his reputation declined in the light of failures such as his research into copper-bottomed ships, he lost popularity and authority.

61.

Humphry Davy offended the mathematicians and reformers by failing to ensure that Babbage received one of the new Royal Medals or the vacant secretaryship of the Society in 1826.

62.

Humphry Davy is supposed to have even claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery.

63.

Humphry Davy later accused Faraday of plagiarism causing Faraday to cease all research in electromagnetism until his mentor's death.

64.

Humphry Davy spent the last months of his life writing Consolations in Travel, an immensely popular, somewhat freeform compendium of poetry, thoughts on science and philosophy.

65.

Humphry Davy spent the winter in Rome, hunting in the Campagna on his fiftieth birthday.

66.

Humphry Davy had wished to be buried where he died, but had wanted the burial delayed in case he was only comatose.

67.

Humphry Davy refused to allow a post-mortem for similar reasons.