Sir Humphry Davy (Red)

Sir Humphry Davy was an English Chemist who discovered several chemical elements (including sodium and potassium) and compounds.  He became one of the greatest exponents of the scientific method.  Davy is best remembered for his invention of the safety lamp for coal miners - something very important to the history of the community our Academy serves.

He was born in Penzance in Cornwall on 17 December 1778, the elder son of middle class parents.  He began the serious study of science in 1797.

By 1802 he became a professor of chemistry and he was elected secreatry of The Royal Society in 1807.

Davy's chemical lectures and demonstrations were brilliantly presented and became a fashionable social event. He also lectured and wrote a book on agricultural chemistry and presented the first systematic geology course offered in England.

His first Bakerian Lecture won a prize from Napoleon,even though France and England were at war.

His work led to the isolation of sodium and potassium from their compounds (1807) and of the alkaline-earth metals from theirs (1808). He also discovered boron (by heating borax with potassium), hydrogen telluride, and hydrogen phosphide (phosphine). He showed the correct relation of chlorine to hydrochloric acid.

Later in his life he studied, for the Society for Preventing Accidents in Coal Mines, the conditions under which mixtures of firedamp and air explode. This led to the invention of the miner's safety lamp and to subsequent researches on flame, for which he received the Rumford medals (gold and silver) from the Royal Society and, from the northern mine owners, a service of plate (eventually sold to found the Davy Medal).