Sir Humphry Davy

Abstract

Herein we describe the extraordinary skills of Humphry Davy, the self-taught, woodcarver’s son from Cornwall, who combined brilliant scientific research with felicity of literary and poetic expression; and he became the toast of London. As well as his unique lecturing skills, he made fundamental discoveries in pure science and technology. He discovered the metals sodium, potassium, strontium, magnesium and chlorine; he invented the miners’ safety lamp; he did fundamental work in physiology; and founded the science of agricultural chemistry. He was also instrumental in founding the Geological Society and the London Club, Athenaeum. His marriage to a rich Scottish widow was not a happy one. He was a close friend of the poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Byron, and he himself was a minor poet. He claimed that his greatest discovery was Michael Faraday.