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HUMPHRY DAVY

Sir Humphry Davy was an English chemist. He was born in 1778 at Penzance and died in 1829.
After having received the rudiments of a classical education he was placed with a surgeon and apothecary, and early developed a taste for scientific experiments. He studied under Lavoisier and Nicholson and became superintendent of the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. There he studied the properties of nitrous oxide, and as a result was made assistant lecturer and was appointed professor of chemistry in the Royal Institution at the age of twenty-four.

In 1803 he was chosen a member of the Royal Society. His discoveries with the galvanic battery, his decomposition of the earths and alkalies and ascertaining their metallic bases, his demonstration of the simple nature of the oxymuriatic acid (to which he gave the name of chlorine), etc, obtained him an extensive reputation; and in 1810 he received the prize of the French Institute. In 1814 he was elected a corresponding member of that body. Having been elected professor of chemistry to the Board of Agriculture he delivered lectures on agricultural chemistry during ten successive years. The numerous accidents arising from fire-damp in mines led him to enter upon a series of experiments on the nature of the explosive gas, the result of which was the invention of his safety-lamp.

He was knighted in 1812, and created a baronet in 1818. In 1820 he succeeded Sir J Banks as president of the Royal Society, and at the time of his death he was a member of most of the scientific societies of Europe. His health had been failing for some time, and in his last year he had gone abroad for his health. His most important works are: Philosophical Researches;
Elements of Agricultural Chemistry; Electro-Chemical Researches; Elements of Chemical Philosophy; Researches on the Oxymuriatic Acid; On Fire-damp. He also contributed some valuable papers to the Philosophical Transactions, and was author of Salmonia, or Days of Fly-fishing; and Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher.
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