Humphry Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also 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. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. He is credited with discovering clathrate hydrates.
In 1799, he experimented with nitrous oxide and was astonished at how it made him laugh. He nicknamed it "laughing gas" and wrote about its potential as an anaesthetic to relieve pain during surgery. Davy was a baronet, President of the Royal Society, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a founder member and Fellow of the Geological Society of London, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture "On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity" "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."
Early life: 1778–1798
Education, apprenticeship and poetry
Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall, England on 17 December 1778, the eldest of the five children of Robert Davy, a woodcarver, and his wife Grace Millett. According to his brother and fellow chemist John Davy, their hometown was characterised by "an almost unbounded credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous... Amongst the middle and higher classes, there was little taste for literature, and still less for science... Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cockfighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in."Education
At the age of six, Davy was sent to the grammar school at Penzance. Three years later, his family moved to Varfell, near Ludgvan, and subsequently, in term-time, Davy boarded with John Tonkin, his godfather and later his guardian. Upon Davy's leaving grammar school in 1793, Tonkin paid for him to attend Truro Grammar School to finish his education under the Rev Dr Cardew, who, in a letter to the engineer and Fellow of the Royal Society Davies Giddy, said dryly, "I could not discern the faculties by which he was afterwards so much distinguished." Davy entertained his school friends by writing poetry, composing Valentines, and telling stories from One Thousand and One Nights. Reflecting on his school days in a letter to his mother, Davy wrote, "Learning naturally is a true pleasure; how unfortunate then it is that in most schools it is made a pain." "I consider it fortunate", he continued, "I was left much to myself as a child, and put upon no particular plan of study... What I am I made myself." His brother said Davy possessed a "native vigour" and "the genuine quality of genius, or of that power of intellect which exalts its possessor above the crowd."Apothecary's apprentice
After Davy's father died in 1794, Tonkin apprenticed him to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a practice in Penzance. While becoming a chemist in the apothecary's dispensary, he began conducting his earliest experiments at home, much to the annoyance of his friends and family. His older sister, for instance, complained his corrosive substances were destroying her dresses, and at least one friend thought it likely the "incorrigible" Davy would eventually "blow us all into the air."In 1797, after he learnt French from a refugee priest, Davy read Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie. This exposure influenced much of his future work, which can be seen as reaction against Lavoisier's work and the dominance of French chemists.
Poetry
As a poet, over one hundred and sixty manuscript poems were written by Davy, the majority of which are found in his personal notebooks. Most of his written poems were not published, and he chose instead to share a few of them with his friends. Eight of his known poems were published. His poems reflected his views on both his career and also his perception of certain aspects of human life. He wrote on human endeavours and aspects of life like death, metaphysics, geology, natural theology and chemistry.John Ayrton Paris remarked that poems written by the young Davy "bear the stamp of lofty genius". Davy's first preserved poem entitled "The Sons of Genius" is dated 1795 and marked by the usual immaturity of youth. Other poems written in the following years, especially "On the Mount's Bay" and "St Michael's Mount", are descriptive verses.
Although he initially started writing his poems, albeit haphazardly, as a reflection of his views on his career and on life generally, most of his final poems concentrated on immortality and death. This was after he started experiencing failing health and a decline both in health and career.
Painting
Three of Davy's paintings from around 1796 have been donated to the Penlee House museum at Penzance. One is of the view from above Gulval showing the church, Mount's Bay and the Mount, while the other two depict Loch Lomond in Scotland.Materiality of heat
At 17, he discussed the question of the materiality of heat with his Quaker friend and mentor Robert Dunkin. Dunkin remarked: 'I tell thee what, Humphry, thou art the most quibbling hand at a dispute I ever met with in my life.' One winter day he took Davy to the Lariggan River to show him that rubbing two plates of ice together developed sufficient energy by motion to melt them, and that after the motion was suspended, the pieces were united by regelation. It was a crude form of analogous experiment exhibited by Davy in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution that elicited considerable attention. As professor at the Royal Institution, Davy repeated many of the ingenious experiments he learnt from Dunkin.Early career: 1798–1802
Davy's gift for chemistry is recognised
Davies Giddy met Davy in Penzance carelessly swinging on the half-gate of Dr Borlase's house, and interested by his talk invited him to his house at Tredrea and offered him the use of his library. This led to his introduction to Dr Edwards, who lived at Hayle Copper House. Edwards was a lecturer in chemistry in the school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He permitted Davy to use his laboratory and possibly directed his attention to the floodgates of the port of Hayle in Cornwall, which were rapidly decaying as a result of the contact between copper and iron under the influence of seawater. Galvanic corrosion was not understood at that time, but the phenomenon prepared Davy's mind for subsequent experiments on ships' copper sheathing. Gregory Watt, son of James Watt, visited Penzance for his health's sake, and while lodging at the Davys' house became a friend and gave him instructions in chemistry. Davy was also acquainted with the Wedgwood family, who spent a winter at Penzance.Thomas Beddoes
At this time, physician and scientific writer Thomas Beddoes and geologist John Hailstone were engaged in a geological controversy on the rival merits of the Plutonian and Neptunist hypotheses. They travelled together to examine the Cornish coast accompanied by Giddy—an intimate friend of Beddoes—and made Davy's acquaintance. Beddoes had established at Bristol a medical research facility called the 'Pneumatic Institution,' and needed an assistant to superintend the laboratory. Giddy recommended Davy, and in 1798 Gregory Watt showed Beddoes Davy's Young man's Researches on Heat and Light, which he later published in the first volume of West-Country Contributions. After prolonged negotiations, Mrs. Davy and Borlase consented to Davy's departure. Tonkin wished him to remain in his native town as a surgeon, and altered his will when Davy insisted on going to Dr Beddoes.Pneumatic Institution
On 2 October 1798, Davy joined the Pneumatic Institution at Bristol. It had been established to investigate the medical powers of factitious airs and gases, and Davy was to superintend the various experiments. The arrangement agreed between Dr Beddoes and Davy was generous, and enabled Davy to give up all claims on his paternal property in favour of his mother. He 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. While living in Bristol, Davy met the Earl of Durham, who resided in the institution for his health.Anna Beddoes
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. The critic Maurice Hindle was the first to reveal that Davy and Anna had written poems for each other. Wahida Amin has transcribed and discussed a number of poems written between 1803 and 1808 to "Anna" and one to her infant child.Non-existence of caloric
In 1799, the first volume of the West-Country Collections was issued. Half consisted of Davy's essays On Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light, On Phos-oxygen and its Combinations, and on the Theory of Respiration. On 22 February 1799 Davy, wrote to Davies Giddy, "I am now as much convinced of the non-existence of caloric as I am of the existence of light."Nitrous oxide
In 1799, Davy became increasingly well known due to his experiments with the physiological action of some gases, including laughing gas. The gas was first synthesised in 1772 by the natural philosopher and chemist Joseph Priestley, who called it dephlogisticated nitrous air. Priestley described his discovery in the book Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air , in which he described how to produce the preparation of "nitrous air diminished", by heating iron filings dampened with nitric acid. In another letter to Giddy, on 10 April, Davy informs him: "I made a discovery yesterday which proves how necessary it is to repeat experiments. The gaseous oxide of azote is perfectly respirable when pure. It is never deleterious but when it contains nitrous gas. I have found a mode of making it pure." He said that he breathed sixteen quarts of it for nearly seven minutes, and that it "absolutely intoxicated me."In addition to Davy himself, his enthusiastic experimental subjects included his poet friends Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as Gregory Watt and James Watt, other close friends. James Watt built a portable gas chamber to facilitate Davy's experiments with the inhalation of nitrous oxide. At one point the gas was combined with wine to judge its efficacy as a cure for hangover. The gas was popular among Davy's friends and acquaintances, and he noted that it might be useful for performing surgical operations. Anesthetics were not regularly used in medicine or dentistry until decades after Davy's death.