This blog was researched and written by Library Volunteer Edward Maunder. 

Humphry Davy was born in Penzance as the eldest of 5 children in 1778. His father  was a woodcarver and owned a small estate in Cornwall. At the age of 15, Davy entered Truro Grammar school, having already developed a great love of nature and a lively imagination. At that stage of his life he also loved poetry, including its composition. His father died in 1794, leaving his wife, Grace Millet Davy, and the rest of the family heavily in debt because of his failed mining investments. The death of his father changed Davy’s life, making him determined to help his mother by quickly making something of himself. Davy was influenced by his godfather, John Tonkin, who became his guardian after his father’s death. Tonkin supported Davy’s education and introduced him to various subjects, including chemistry, which would later become his primary field of study.

Davy was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary a year later, and he hoped eventually to qualify for a medical career, but he also educated himself in other subjects, including theology, philosophy, languages, and the sciences, including chemistry. At the age of 19, it seems that he had decided that science was for him, and he was introduced to a chemistry laboratory by Davies Giddy, who would later become the president of the Royal Society. Giddy was also born in Penzance, where he met Davy.

An article Davy wrote on heat and light impressed Dr. Thomas Beddoes, an eminent English physician and scientific writer who had founded the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol, where he experimented with the use of gases in medical treatment. Davy joined Beddoes’ institution in 1798, and at age 19 he became its chemical superintendent. While there he explored oxides, nitrogen, and ammonia. He published his findings in the 1800 book Researches, chemical and philosophical, which attracted recognition in the field. In 1801, Davy was invited to lecture at the Royal Institution in London (a body that was formed primarily to educate the public on scientific matters). He was appointed first as a lecturer and then as a professor of chemistry (1802). His lectures became so popular that admirers would line up to attend them. He had earned the professorship just five years after reading his first chemistry book. The following year he was admitted as a fellow to the Royal Society, to which he was elected Secretary in 1807 (aged 29), another position which provided a salary.

This meteoric rise in his recognition as a chemical scientist was due to his numerous discoveries, including nitrous oxide (laughing gas), and chemical decomposition by electrolysis. For the latter work he received the Napoleon Prize from the Institut de France in 1807, despite the then state of war existing between England and France.

By his early thirties he had delivered a popular lecture series on agricultural chemistry.  The lectures had been enthusiastically received in Dublin, where he had received an honorary degree of LL.D from Trinity College, and were published as The elements of agricultural chemistry (these were published in 1813, the year of founding the DEI!). The earlier lecture series was presented to the Board of Agriculture (which existed from 1793 to 1822 as a private group funded by government until 1820). The Board appears to have ended after the Government stopped funding, and insufficient private funds could be raised to continue it.

The Elements of agricultural chemistry is available to view in the DEI library, and contains various drawings, including detailed views of plants (e.g. the common lilly and the garden bean), and sections through trees (e.g. the branch of an ash tree).

In April 1812 (aged 33) his life was transformed by three events:

  • He was knighted by the Prince Regent (later George IV);
  • He delivered a farewell lecture to the Royal Institution, i.e. he resigned from the RI;
  • He married a wealthy widow: Jane Apreece.

The wealth of his wife apparently stemmed from inheritance from her father, who had gained great wealth from his activities in the Caribbean (Davy’s links to slavery through these connections have been explored in a blog by the Keats-Shelley Association of America). Davy was able to resign from paid employment and continue his own scientific interests without financial concerns.

In 1813 Davy and his wife began a European tour with a visit to Paris to be presented to the empress Marie Louise and receive the Napolean Prize. This had been delayed by the war which had impeded communication concerning the Prize. It seems that a letter had been sent to Davy in 1808 to inform him, but this was not received because of the naval blockade imposed on France. When Davy eventually learnt of the letter, they sailed to Morlaix on a ship transferring French prisoners of war, and were initially arrested on arrival on suspicion of carrying false passports!

He is most often remembered for his invention of a miner’s safety lamp (1815), but he invented and investigated so many other things.

He was created a Baronet in 1818, in recognition of his services to chemistry etc. This is an hereditary title presented by the Crown, though he never had any offspring to pass it on to. He was elected President of the Royal Society in 1820 to 1827. In 1824, Davy, assisted by Michael Faraday, initiated work funded by the Admiralty on the protection of copper sheeting on ships of war and other ships from corrosion. Davy applied his knowledge, experience and meticulous scientific method to understanding the cause of the corrosion and reasons why corrosion can be mitigated by electrochemical means. With others he founded the Zoological Society of London in 1826, which led to the zoo created in Regent’s Park.

By 1827 he had burnt himself out, retired to Italy, written a book on Fly Fishing, and had a stroke. He died in Geneva in 1829 at the relatively young age of 51.

“Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer.” – Sir Humphry Davy

I think Sir David Attenborough would agree! In Davy’s honour, the Royal Society has awarded the Davy Medal annually since 1877 “for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry.” Davy’s work served as a guide and inspiration encouraging many to study chemistry, physics and other fields of science, including Michael Faraday, his lab assistant. Faraday became famous in his own right for his contributions to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. It has been said that Faraday was Davy’s greatest discovery. He also was known as one of the greatest exponents of the scientific method, a mathematical and experimental technique employed in the sciences, specifically in the construction and testing of a scientific hypothesis.

 

Sources available to view in the DEI Library: 

Sir Humphry Davy, Elements of agricultural chemistry in a course of lectures for the Board of Agriculture, (1813). Classmark: O/DAV/D

Sir Humphry Davy, Fragmentary remains, literary and scientific, of Sir Humphry Davy bart., late president of the Royal society, etc. : with a sketch of his life and selections from his correspondence, (1858). Classmark: D 1. 34

John Davy, Memoirs of the life of Sir Humphry Davy, (1836). Classmark: O/DAV/D

John Ayrton Paris, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, (1831). Classmark: O/DAV/P X