Humphry Davy Totally Explained

Everything about Humphry Davy totally explained

|birth_place = Penzance, Cornwall, Great Britain |death_date = |death_place = Geneva, Switzerland |nationality = British |ethnicity = Cornish |field = Chemistry |work_institutions = Royal Society, Royal Institution |alma_mater = |doctoral_advisor = |doctoral_students = Michael Faraday |known_for = Electrolysis, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, barium, boron, Davy lamp |religion = }}
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet FRS (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor. "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry." This paper was central to any chemical affinity theory in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Biography

Davy was born at Penzance in Cornwall on 17 December 1778. The parish register of Madron (the parish church) records ‘Humphry Davy, son of Robert Davy, baptized at Penzance, January 22nd, 1779.’ Robert Davy was a wood-carver at Penzance, who pursued his art rather for amusement than profit. As the representative of an old family (monuments to his ancestors in Ludgvan Church date as far back as 1635), he became possessor of a modest patrimony. His wife, Grace Millett, came of an old but no longer wealthy family. Her parents died within a few hours of each other from malignant fever, when Grace and her two sisters were adopted by John Tonkin, an eminent surgeon in Penzance. Robert Davy and his wife became the parents of five children—two boys, Humphry, the eldest, and John, and three girls. In Davy's childhood the family moved from Penzance to Varfell, their family estate in Ludgvan. Davy's boyhood was spent partly with his parents and partly with Tonkin, who placed him at a preparatory school kept by a Mr. Bushell, who was so much struck with the boy's progress that he persuaded the father to send him to a better school. Davy was at an early age placed at the Penzance grammar school, then under the care of the Rev. J. C. Coryton. Numerous anecdotes show that Davy was a precocious boy, possessing a remarkable memory and being singularly rapid in acquiring knowledge of books. He was especially attracted by the ‘Pilgrim's Progress,’ and he delighted in reading history. When but eight years of age he'd collect a number of boys, and standing on a cart in the market-place address them on the subject of his latest reading. He delighted in the folklore of this remote district, and became, as he himself tells us, a ‘tale-teller.’ The ‘applause of my companions,’ he says, ‘was my recompense for punishments incurred for being idle.’ These conditions developed a love of poetry and the composition of verses and ballads.
At the same time Davy acquired a taste for experimental science. This was mainly due to a member of the Society of Friends named Robert Dunkin, a saddler and a man of original mind and of the most varied acquirements. Dunkin constructed for himself an electrical machine, voltaic piles, and Leyden jars, and made models illustrative of the principles of mechanics. By the aid of these appliances he instructed Davy in the rudiments of science. As professor at the Royal Institution, Davy repeated many of the ingenious experiments which he'd learned from his quaker instructor. From the Penzance school Davy went in 1793 to Truro, and finished his education under the Rev. Dr. Cardew, who, in a letter to Davies Gilbert, says: ‘I couldn't discern the faculties by which he was afterwards so much distinguished.’ Davy says himself: ‘I consider it fortunate I was left much to myself as a child, and put upon no particular plan of study. … What I'm I made myself.’

Apprentice and poet

After the death of Davy's father in 1794, Tonkin apprenticed the boy to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon in large practice at Penzance. Davy's indenture is dated 10 February 1795. In the apothecary's dispensary Davy became a chemist, and a garret in Tonkin's house was the scene of his earliest chemical operations. Davy's friends would often say: ‘This boy Humphry is incorrigible. He will blow us all into the air,’ and his eldest sister complained of the ravages made on her dresses by corrosive substances. to show him that the rubbing of two plates of ice together developed sufficient energy by motion to melt them, and that the motion being suspended the pieces were united by regelation. This was, in a rude form, an elementary version of an analogous experiment later exhibited by Davy in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution, which excited considerable attention. Pierre Louis Dulong first prepared this compound in 1812, and lost two fingers and an eye in two separate explosions with it. Davy's own accident induced him to hire Michael Faraday as a coworker.

Work

In 1812, Davy 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 Michael Faraday as his scientific assistant (and valet), traveled to France to collect a medal that Napoleon Bonaparte had awarded Davy for his electro-chemical work. While in Paris, Davy was asked by Gay-Lussac to investigate a mysterious substance isolated by Bernard Courtois. Davy showed it to be an element, which is now called iodine.
The party left Paris in December or 1812, travelling south to Italy. They sojourned in Florence, where, in a series of experiments conducted with Faraday's assistance, Davy succeeded in using the sun's rays to ignite diamond, proving it's composed of pure carbon. Davy's party continued on to Rome, and also visited Naples and Mount Vesuvius. By June 1814, they were in Milan, where they met Alessandro Volta, and then continued north to Geneva. They returned to Italy via Munich and Innsbruck, and when their plans to travel to Greece and Constantinople (Istanbul) were abandoned after Napoleon's escape from Elba, they returned to England.
In January 1819, Davy was awarded a baronetcy, at the time the highest honour ever conferred on a man of science in Britain. A year later he became President of the Royal Society.

Davy lamp

After his return to England in 1815, Davy experimented with lamps for use in coal mines. There had been many mining explosions caused by firedamp or methane often ignited by open flames of the lamps then used by miners. In particular the Felling mine disaster in 1812 near Newcastle caused great loss of life, and action was needed to improve underground lighting and especially the lamps used by miners. 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. Although the idea of the safety lamp had already been demonstrated by William Reid Clanny and by the then unknown (but later very famous) engineer George Stephenson, Davy's use of wire gauze to prevent the spread of flame was copied by other inventors in their later designs. Unfortunately, although the new design initially did seem offer protection, it gave less light, and quickly deteriorated in the wet conditions of most pits. Rusting of the gauze quickly made the lamp unsafe, and the number of deaths from firedamp explosions rose yet further.
There was some discussion as to whether Davy had discovered the principles behind his lamp without the help of the work of Smithson Tennant, but it was generally agreed that the work of both men had been independent. Davy refused to patent the lamp, and its invention led to him being awarded the Rumford medal in 1816.

Acid-base studies

In 1815 Davy suggested that acids were substances that contained replaceable hydrogen – hydrogen that could be partly or totally replaced by metals. When acids reacted with metals they formed salts. Bases were substances that reacted with acids to form salts and water. These definitions worked well for most of the nineteenth century.

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 he became the more famous and influential scientist – to the extent that Davy is supposed to have claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery. However, Davy 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 honours

A lunar crater (Davy) 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's 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 James Prescott Joule and 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.

Publications

See Fullmer's work for a full list of Davy's articles. 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

by Humphry Davy (1830), London: John Murray, 1830

Bibliography

Further Information

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