ESSAY
DOI: 10.1002/cphc.200700686
Sir Humphry Davy: Boundless Chemist, Physicist, Poet and
Man of Action**
Sir John Meurig Thomas,*[a] Peter P. Edwards,*[b] and Vladimir L. Kuznetsov[b]
Dedicated to Professor R. Matijević on the occasion of his 85th birthday
The years 2007 and 2008 mark the bi-centenary of two brilliant
discoveries by Sir Humphry Davy: the isolation of sodium and potassium (1807) and the subsequent first observation (1808) of the
beautiful blue and bronze colours now known to be characteristic
of the solvated electron1 in potassium–ammonia systems. In cele-
bration of these dazzling discoveries, we reflect on Davy’s many
extraodinary contributions to science, technology and poetry.
Humphry Davy, a truly great man, of Cornish spirit, brought immeasurable benefits to humankind.
Buried in Geneva in 1829 not long after
his fiftieth birthday, Humphry Davy
(Figure 1) packed more action and achievement into his short life than most
scientists and natural philosophers
before or after him,[1] even those who
outlived him by several decades.
Some of his outstanding contributions
include:
*
1
The isolation of metallic potassium
on 6 October, 1807—followed a few
days later by sodium. Davy’s contribution was hailed by Dimitri Mendeleev as “…one of the greatest discoveries in Chemistry…”,[2] and from Berzelius[3] as “… one of the best
(papers) which has enriched the
theory of chemistry”. Subsequently,
Davy isolated the alkaline earths:
barium, strontium, calcium and magnesium, and later boron (all this
The accompanying article by I-Ren Lee, Wonchul
Lee and Ahmed H. Zewail[8] reports a modern-day
study of the actual solution dynamics of electrons
with individual, finite size clusters of ammonia.
[a] Prof. Dr. Sir J. M. Thomas
Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy
University of Cambridge
Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QZ (UK)
Fax: (+ 44) 1223-740-360
E-mail: jmt2@cam.ac.uk
[b] Prof. Dr. P. P. Edwards, Dr. V. L. Kuznetsov
Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory
University of Oxford
South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QR (UK)
Fax: (+ 44) 1865-272-656
E-mail: peter.edwards@chem.ox.ac.uk
[**] Based in part on the Lecture (by JMT) in April
1996 at the Technical University of Eindhoven.
ChemPhysChem 2008, 9, 59 – 66
*
*
*
Figure 1. Portrait of Sir Humphry Davy by Sir
Thomas Lawrence (The Royal Society).
*
*
*
arose because he was the first to
argue that if electricity could be
generated by chemical action then,
conversely, electricity could decompose compounds into their fundamental elements.)
The realisation that chemical forces
were, fundamentally, electrical in
nature—a point that was taken up
and incontrovertibly established
later by Faraday, Helmholtz, Stoney
and Thomson.
The invention of the technique of
cathodic protection—the suppression of metallic corrosion by sacrificial dissolution of another more
electroactive metal (every ship that
now sails the oceans is fitted with
cathodic protection devices, as are
innumerable alloy and metallic
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*
*
structures on land and all underground pipework in industrial manufacturing centres.)
The invention of the carbon (electric) arc; Davy also showed (following Øersted) that it is deflected in a
magnetic field.
The first demonstration that the
electrical conductivity of a metal decreases with increasing temperature
and that its measured resistance is
directly proportional to its length
and inversely proportional to its
cross-section.
The first demonstration and construction of a concentration cell,
whereby an emf is produced by
chemical diffusion.
Utilisation of an electric arc to rise
carbon to incandescence. Davy demonstrated that the chemical agent
denoted by Lavoisier and others as
oxymuriatic acid was none other
than pure element chlorine[4] (the
fact that oxymuriatic acid did not
contain oxygen meant that Davy
overturned Lavoisier’s definition of
an acid, as a substance that contains
oxygen[5]).
The first preparation of nitrous oxide
in a pure form; Davy was also the
first to discover its anaesthetic properties.
The first observation[6] of the brilliant
blue and bronze colours of alkali–
ammonia solutions, now attributed
to solvated electrons and seen[7] as
the genesis of the exploration of
electron transfer and solvation processes in the condensed phase. As
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J. M. Thomas, P. P. Edwards and V. L. Kuznetsov
*
man’s club in central London). Throughout his life, he cultivated his artistic propensities. Some of his earliest (and one
of his last) works were poems (see
below). Davy was a central figure in William Wordsworth’s circle of friends,
which included Coleridge, Sir Walter
Scott and Southey, and he frequently entertained them in the Director’s flat at
the Royal Institution. Davy’s poetry, as
well as his chemistry, is mentioned in
George Eliot’s famous novel Middlemarch. The poetic flair that Davy
brought to his science is beautifully illustrated in the opening paragraph of his
article, published in Philos. Trans. Royal
I-Ren Lee and co-workers note in
this issue, this is … “…the Discovery
System of Solvation”[8] .
The invention of the Miner’s Safety
Lamp (the Davy Lamp), which is still
used in coal mines worldwide to
detect the presence of firedamp
(methane), the source of numerous
underground explosions and deaths
(Tsar Alexander of Russia, in late
1825, sent Davy a superb silver gilt
Figure 3. Title page of “The Elements of Agricultural Chemistry” by Humphry Davy.
Numerous other advances in science
and technology were made by Davy
during the period that he was Director
of the Royal Institution of Great Britain,
London (1802–1812). He invented a
method of bleaching cloth (based on
the use of chlorine and liberated
oxygen), of copying paintings on ceramics; and of tanning leather using materials other than tannin; he was among the
first to pioneer the scientific study of
pigments and archeological artifacts and
he founded the science of agricultural
chemistry, an exposition of which he
gave over many years in the Royal Irish
Academy, Dublin (see Figure 3) and
which formed the basis of his highly influential publication “The Elements of Agricultural Chemistry” (London, 1813);[9]
this remained the standard work on the
subject for more than half a century.
The Bakerian Lecture to the Royal Society, delivered in 1806, “On some Chemical Agencies of Electricity” is also noteworthy in that it vividly illustrates Davy’s
prophetic insights into chemistry and
chemical combinations. In that lecture
he introduced a fundamentally new concept into chemists’ minds—the linking
of chemical action and affinity with electricity. Remarkably, even though France
and Britain were then at war, Davy was
awarded the Napoleon Prize in 1807 by
the Institute de France for his investigations during the previous year into the
chemical changes produced by the voltaic current and reported in his lecture.
In his period as President of the Royal
Society (1820–1827), he opened up the
Society to those of merit from all classes.
He also helped to establish the London
Zoological Society, the Geological Society of London and the London Zoo in
Regent Park, and inaugurated the formation of the Athenaeum Club (a gentle-
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Figure 2. The Silver Gilt Vase presented to
Humphry Davy in 1825 by Tsar Alexander.
*
vase in appreciation of what the
Davy lamp had meant to miners in
Russia, see Figure 2.) Davy never patented this invention, though urged
to do so by friends, colleagues and
owners of collieries. His response
was… “My sole object was to serve
the cause of humanity; and if I have
succeeded, I am amply rewarded in
the gratifying reflection of having
done so”.
Davy delivered the Bakerian Lecture
of the Royal Society, its premier lecture in the physical sciences, on a
total of seven different occasions.
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Figure 4. First two paragraphs of the Philosophical Transactions article of Humphry Davy.
Soc., 1815, p. 97 entitled “Some experiments and observations on the colours
used in painting by the Ancients” (see
Figure 4).
This remarkable article, which contains
one of the first examples of the application of science to archaeology and of
the scientific analysis of pigment, is replete with references to, and quotations
from, Pliny and to De Lapidibus by Theophrastus and to Vitrivius’s De Architectura. (Davy had learnt Latin and Greek at
school and he later taught himself
Hebrew; he was also fluent in French
and Italian.) The last paragraph of Davy’s
lengthy and evocative introduction ends
with the charming statement:
ChemPhysChem 2008, 9, 59 – 66
ESSAY
“I flatter myself (that) I shall be able to
give some information not without interest to scientific men as well as to artists,
and not wholly devoid of practical application”.
The article also acknowledges help
given to him in Rome by “my friend
Canova”.[10] His circle of friends was expansive. A trusted adviser of the highest
society in England, he was welcomed as
honoured guest at the great country
houses. He stayed with the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, with Lord Sheffield in
Sussex, with Lord Byron in Ravenna. A
painting that now hangs in the Tate Gallery, London, shows Davy present, along
with other members of the Illuminati, at
Mr. Coke’s annual sheep-shearing at the
grand mansion in Halkham. Another
close friend was the intellectually omnivorous William Hyde Wallaston, a leader
in mineralogy, botany and chemistry,
and founder of powder metallurgy and
much else.
A Brief Outline of Davy’s
Early Life[1]
Humphry Davy was born on 17th December, 1778, in Penzance, Cornwall, the
first of five children of Robert Davy, a
woodcarver and gilder. He first attended
the Writing School at Penzance and then
the Latin School in the same town. Later
he went to the famous Grammar School
at Truro, also in Cornwall. He left school
a week before his fifteenth birthday, and
his next year was spent in roaming the
countryside that he loved, and in shooting and fishing. The beauty of the countryside moved his Cornish spirit profoundly, but he was observant of all that
went on around him and was as interested in the activities of the people, the
farmers, the fishermen, the tin miners
and was quick to see in that industrial
enclave of rural Britain the benefits of
the inventiveness of Cornish practical engineers in the development of machines
to ease the burden of labour. One of his
outstanding qualities manifested itself at
quite an early age—the ability to hold
an audience. He was a great story teller,
and his friends would collect outside his
home to hear his tales. He once said:
ChemPhysChem 2008, 9, 59 – 66
“After reading a few books, I was seized
by the desire to narrate to gratify the passion of my youthful auditions. I gradually
began to invent and form stories of my
own. Perhaps this has produced all my
originality. I never had a (good) memory. I
never loved to imitate but always to
invent. Hence many of my errors”.
This happy year after leaving school
was critical in Davy’s life because he had
no set plans for the future, but an event
took place which was to change his life.
This was the death of his father in December, 1794. After this, Davy decided
to become apprenticed to a surgeon
apothecary (and later a distinguished
surgeon), John Bingham Borlase. He
began seriously to study to become a
medical doctor, with the intention of ultimately going to Edinburgh to qualify
as a physician. He drew up a formidable
programme of self-education, which included theology, geography, languages,
logic, physics and even nosology—the
classification of diseases.
Towards the end of 1797 he began to
study chemistry, having been prompted
to do so by reading an English translation of Lavoisier’s famous treatise “Elements of Chemistry”. Davy soon began
to conduct his own experiments on the
nature of heat and light, which led to his
first paper in 1799—a puerile article that
need concern us no further here. In retrospect, commenting on the paper, he
later said:
“The human mind is always governed, not
by what it knows but by what it believes,
not by what it is capable of attaining, but
by what it desires”.
In Cornwall, Davy’s experiments took
him into the phenomenon of respiration
of a wide range of living organisms. He
was the first to show that venous blood
contains CO2. In October 1798 he was
appointed to new medical centre in Bristol called The Pneumatic Institute set up
by a resourceful scholar named Thomas
Beddoes who found it necessary to flee
from his College in Oxford, Christ
Church, because of his (Beddoes’) general approval of the French Revolution.
The Pneumatic Institute was part hospital,
part laboratory, part lecture theatre—its
aims were to explore the medical effects
of different gases, in the sanguine hope
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that powerful remedies might be found
among them. Not yet 20, Davy took up
the post of Director of the Pneumatic Institute in Bristol.
Davy became involved in the treatment of patients, some with hydrocarbonate (a mixture—quite lethal—of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, now
known as “syn gas”, produced by passing steam over red hot charcoal). Fortunately, early on Beddoes found this mixture to be fatal to a pigeon when mixed
with one-third of its volume of air! Davy
had a narrow escape from death when
he inhaled the same mixture.
Seven months earlier (March 1798),
while still in Penzance, Davy had read a
paper by the American physician Dr
Samuel Latham Mitchill who sought to
prove that the “gaseous oxide of azote”
(nitrous oxide that had been discovered
by Joseph Priestley in 1772) was the
principle of contagion and was instantly
fatal when breathed; it was said to be
responsible for the sudden deaths of
those stricken by plague. Davy was
highly sceptical of these claims; and he
showed that they were erroneous. He
breathed mixtures of N2O and air himself
with no ill-effect. On the contrary, it was
at the Pneumatic Institute where he prepared pig’s bladders full of pure N2O (by
decomposing ammonium nitrate); he recorded, after one trial:
“My sensations were now pleasant. I had
a generally diffused warmth…a sense of
exhilaration similar to that produced by a
small dose of wine and a disposition of
muscular motion and merriment”.
In 1800 Davy had published a work of
great orderliness and systematic observation: a 580-page volume entitled “Researches, chemical and philosophical,
chiefly concerning N2O or dephlogisticated
air and its respiration”, summarizing his
year’s work on patients and on himself
(the general conclusion about use of
gases as medicinal cures was at best
neutral). Of far greater significance, however, were the five short but penetrating
scientific papers he published following
up and greatly extending the remarkable
discovery of Alessandro Volta in 1800.
On 20 March 1800, the Italian scientist
Volta had written to Sir Joseph Banks,
President of the Royal Society, to an-
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J. M. Thomas, P. P. Edwards and V. L. Kuznetsov
namely, that water could be electrolyzed
to yield hydrogen and oxygen only.
In a fragment of a letter home, reviewing his experiences since leaving Penzance, Davy noted:
Davy gave utilitarian courses on: Chemical Principles of the Art of Tanning; Art
of Dyeing and Staining or Printing with
Calouns, Woollen, Linen and Cotton
Goods. He combined these with courses
on chemistry. In 1802, on his appointment as Professor, he began his famous
courses on “Chemistry of Agriculture”
(see Figure 3). Because of their acclaimed
success, Davy’s position at the Royal Institution greatly improved and it enabled
him to turn his attention to fundamental
scientific problems pertaining to electrochemistry, and electrolysis. In turn, this
lead to his famous first[11] and second[12]
Bakerian Lectures in 1806 and 1807 to
the Royal Society of London.
The isolation of potassium and
sodium from the electrochemical decomposition of potash and soda is a breathtaking reminder of the intensity of concentration, speed and supreme experimental skill which Davy could summon
when his mind was concentrated on an
objective in hand. Even though in 1806
he predicted the value of electricity in
the discovery of “the true elements of
bodies”, he started work in earnest only
in October 1807 to see if he could decompose the fixed alkalies potash and
soda “…by the highest electrical power I
could command.”
Within a few days he had made, arguably, the most famous of his scientific
discoveries, the preparation of potassium
and sodium. Just six weeks after commencing his work he reported in his
second Bakerian Lecture (read on November 19, 1807, and published in 1808)
an intensive study and detailed account
of their physical and chemical behaviour
(Figure 5). In that sustained burst of activity, Davy also found that both metals
could be kept “unchanged in freshly distilled naphtha” and both were good conductors of electricity and heat—clear evidence of the then-controversial metallic
nature of the new elements.[13] He also
determined their specific gravities and
melting points and examined the amalgams they formed with elemental mercury. He further determined the composition of the alkalis by weight measurements in metal foil or their weight estimated by comparison of the size of
liquid alkali drops with that of drops of
mercury, the diameter of which he mea-
nounce that electricity could be generated, as he put it, by “the mere contact of
two dissimilar metals”. To say that Volta’s
discovery galvanized scientists all over
Europe would be to use the wrong, if
anachronistic, metaphor. Galvani and
Volta were rivals: one held that electricity was of living or animal origin—you
had to have a frog—the other said its
origin was the contact of two dissimilar
metals. Paradoxically, they were both
right and they were both wrong. And it
was not until Faraday in 1832–33 addressed the problem that the dispute
was finally resolved. But Davy, as a 21year-old in Bristol, arrived at essentially
the right answer. It was chemical
action—not metallic contact—that led
to the generation of electricity.
So, we see here an early example of
Davy’s decisiveness and remarkable insight. Within two months of hearing of
Volta’s letter to Banks, he had demonstrated that it was chemical action—for
example, the dissolution of zinc and the
concomitant deposition of copper—that
really gave rise to the electric current in
a Voltaic pile. He devised several ingenious experiments to prove this. One of
them used tin, acid solution, water, and
more tin—note, no dissimilar metals (another used Pt, BaACHTUNGRE(NO3)2 k water k Na2ACHTUNGRE(SO4),
Pt). He demonstrated in a most elegant
experiment the manner in which matter
is transferred in solution in electrochemical systems. Thus, he took three vessels
connected by moist fibres. The middle
vessel contained water, the two outer
ones sodium sulphate and barium nitrate solutions, respectively. When a Voltaic pile (i.e. an external electrical field)
was connected with the positive terminal in the BaACHTUNGRE(NO3)2 and the negative terminal in the Na2SO4 solution, a precipitate (of BaSO4) was formed in the middle
vessel, thus showing the migration of
barium ions in one direction and that of
sulphate ions in the other (this was accomplished a quarter of a century before
Faraday elucidated the nature of electrochemical phenomena, and thereby established the terms cation and anion).
Davy thus coined the word “electrochemical”. He also confirmed (when only
21 years of age) what his two fellow
Englishmen Carlisle and Nicholson had
discovered in the summer of 1800,
At Beddoes’ Pneumatic Institute in Bristol, Davy’s work attracted considerable
national attention; and on 31st January
1801, writing to his mother, Davy disclosed that Count Rumford had offered
him a post at the recently established
Royal Institution (first as an Assistant
Lecturer in Chemistry). This was the
great turning point in his life. Davy took
up his appointment on 11 March, and six
weeks later he gave the first series of a
course of lectures on “The New Branch
of Philosophy, Galvanism”. It was a brilliant success, and it won the admiration
of Sir Joseph Banks (President of the
Royal Society) and of Rumford himself.
The Philosophical Magazine reported:
“Mr Davy, who appears to be very young,
acquitted himself admirably well. From
the sparkling intelligence of his eye, his
animated manner, and the tout ensemble
we have no doubt of his attaining distinguished excellence”” On 1st June he was
promoted to Lecturer.
Shortly thereafter, in line with Rumford’s idea (in founding the Royal Institution, at a time when science was in a
very undeveloped state, as a “Public Institution for diffusing and facilitating the
general introduction of useful mechanical
inventions and improvements and for
teaching by courses of philosophical lectures and experiments the application of
science to the common purposes of life”)
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“An active and deep feeling of good, a
look towards future greatness has preserved me. I am grateful to the spirit that
is everywhere, that I have passed through
the most dangerous period of my life with
but a few errors, in pursuits which promise
me at some future time, the honourable
meed of the applause of enlightened
men”.
This inspirational feeling of “… a look
towards future greatness…” was indeed
correct. Davy’s prophecy was soon to be
realised.
The Transition to the Royal
Institution
ChemPhysChem 2008, 9, 59 – 66
ESSAY
Figure 5. First page of Humphry Davy’s 1807 Bakerian Lecture of the Royal Society, announcing
the isolation of metallic sodium and potassium.[13]
sured subsequently with a micrometer.
He also investigated the formation of
alkali oxide and determined (correctly)
the percentage of metal in both cases.
Considering the small quantities of metal
that were available and the difficulty of
accurate weight measurements of such
highly reactive metals, these experiments are a potent indication of Davy’s
skill as a dextrous manipulator and analyst.
Mendeleev’s view of the isolation of
metallic sodium in 1807 by Davy as one
of the greatest discoveries in chemistry
centred on the realisation that not only
had the very concept of chemical elements became broader, but also that
chemical properties were observed
which were but feebly shown by the
other elements known at the time. The
discovery also posed a fundamental dilemma since the new chemical elements
possessed many of the physical properties of the known elements (high conductivity, high reflectivity and lustre) but
had exceptionally low densities. In spite
of their lightness (“… a metal that
floats!…”; Primo Levi[14]) Davy argued
forcefully that they were indeed metals,
to which he first gave the name “potagen” and “sodagen” in his laboratory
notebook, before he decided on the deChemPhysChem 2008, 9, 59 – 66
rivatives, potassium and sodium. He
then turned from these new discoveries
to experiments on the amalgamation of
ammonia (recall, not then yet liquefied).
In 1982 one of us discovered in Davy’s
laboratory notebooks his recorded visual
observation[6] of the action of dry, gaseous ammonia with the surface of the
newly discovered potassium. It was only
by Davy’s great experimental care in
drying gaseous ammonia (by passing it
through potash) that such spectacular
colours were indeed possible. Any small
concentration of water in ammonia leads
instantly to amide formation, and complete decomposition of alkali–ammonia
mixtures. Davy’s observations of 1808
can be seen as the first visual observation of solvated electrons, now known to
be highly important in so many research
fields. A reproduction of Davy’s observations from his laboratory notebook of
1808 on the action of dry ammonia on
potassium metal is given in Figure 6.[13a]
These are a few examples of Davy’s vitality, vision and ability, which led him to
establish in the basement laboratory of
the Royal Institution one of the finest
and best equipped in the world. Davy
also appealed to enlightened subscribers, using words that nowadays are beloved by professional fund-raisers, as his
plea for funds to install the world’s most
powerful voltaic battery (in excess of
6000 volts at high current) testifies. As
noted by Levere[3] “…he engaged them
intellectually and especially at arousing
those impulses that opened pocket
books”. Any commentary on Davy’s time
at the Royal Institution must conclude
that during that period he altered the
very course of chemical science and set
it upon a path of ever-expanding progress.
Davy Makes Science
Fashionable
Davy’s lectures at the Royal Institution
rapidly became important social functions and added greatly to the prestige
of science and the Royal Institution. He
combined elegance of literary expression
with brilliant scientific discovery[15] . In
one of his early lectures in the Royal Institution he said:
“Of modern chemistry it may be said that
its beginning is pleasure, its progress
knowledge, its objects truth and utility”—
an acceptable definition even today!
It has to be remembered that in his
Bristol days, Davy confessed to a love of
fame—“the honourable meed of the applause of enlightened men”, as he called
it, both a passion and a motive principle
of his life. He undoubtedly courted fame
and the applause of the multitudes. He
was a coruscatingly brilliant lecturer,
whose carefully prepared, well rehearsed, fluently delivered and breathtaking demonstrations to lay audiences
rapidly became important social functions in London and added greatly to
the prestige of science, and of the Royal
Institution. Davy had fire and vivacity. He
also possessed the power to uplift the
minds of his audience and fill them with
aesthetic, poetic as well as scientific passion. It took him little effort to change
from being a popular raconteur in the
hamlets of Cornwall to being a rivetting
lecturer at the packed auditorium of the
Royal Institution in the heart of London’s
Mayfair.
Figure 6. An entry from Humphry Davy’s laboratory notebook of November 1808. It reads “When 8
Grains of potassium were heated in ammoniacal gas—it assumed a beautiful metallic appearance & gradually became of a fine blue colour”.
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63
J. M. Thomas, P. P. Edwards and V. L. Kuznetsov
Just three months after he arrived in
the Royal Institution in 1801 he wrote to
his friend John King in Bristol:
“…The voice of fame is still murmuring in
my ears—my mind has been excited by
the unexpected plaudits of the multitude—I dream of greatness and utility—I
dream of science restoring to nature what
luxury, what civilization have stolen from
her-pure hearts, the forms of angels,
bosoms beautiful and panting ‘with joy
and hope—My labours are finished for the
season as to public experimenting and
public enunciations. My last lecture was
on Saturday evening. Nearly 500 persons
attended—… There was respirations of nitrous oxide: and unbounded applause.
Amen. …”
The Royal Institution was undoubtedly
the ideal arena for Davy since it gave
him scope to express the two sides of
his character: the probing, intuitive, ingenious, decisive experimentalist—and
his genius—and the artistic, poetic,
story-teller who loved to charm, captivate and enthrall an audience. An example of his own lecturing style is shown in
Figure 7 which reproduces the opening
paragraph of his notes for the lecture
that he gave in March 1808.
The extraordinary enthusiasm and admiration with which his lectures evoked
among men and women of the first rank
and talent in literary, practical scientific
and fashionable circles, were not without
their ill effects. He was lionised and was
much in demand at social gatherings as
mentioned earlier; here was a man
whose friendship was sought by men of
every rank.
As a result of all this it has been written that he lost much of his modest
country charm. The bloom of his simplicity was dulled by the breath of adulation. Time which could have been more
profitably spent in further studies, or in
the society of his intellectual fellows,
was frittered away in the frivolities of
London society or at the soirees or in
the salons of the smart set of the period.
In the opinion of many, he became
snobbish and he was accused of being
vain, overbearing and a social climber,
intellectually careless and not beyond
chicanery and ’politicking’. All of this
must be balanced against his undoubted
brilliance and his many immeasurable
contributions.
Knighthood, Marriage and the
European Tour
On 8th April 1812, at the height of his
fame, “the darling of the British intellectual, social and artistic world” Davy, was
knighted by the Prince Regent and three
days later was married to a rich widow,
Jane Apreece, and in between gave the
final lecture of his last course at the
Royal Institution. That lecture was the
last of four on “The Elements of Chemical
Philosophy”, and they were heard by the
bookbinder’s apprentice, Michael Faraday, whose life they instantly transformed. Faraday was mesmerised by
Davy’s dazzling style and scholarly authority. It prompted Faraday to write to
Davy, who in due course (as is described
Figure 7. Opening paragraph of Humphry Davy’s lecture notes, March 1808.
64
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elsewhere),[15] later appointed him as essentially a bottle-washer and laboratory
assistant.
Faraday began work at the Royal Institution on 1st March 1813. Within a few
weeks Davy entrusted him with the
preparation of samples of the newly discovered nitrogen trichloride. Davy’s expertise, panache and general celerity of
action greatly facilitated Faraday’s progress as an experimentalist. Further good
fortune was soon to come Faraday’s
way. Davy had planned to embark on an
extended tour of Europe with his wife in
1813. He invited Faraday to accompany
the party as his secretary and amanuensis. They set off from Plymouth (on 13
Oct that year) for France, Italy and Switzerland carrying the requisite scientific
equipment for the experiments to be undertaken en-route. In Paris, they experimented with the newly discovered element, iodine; they attended a lecture by
Gay-Lussac, and before leaving the city,
met other savants such as AmpPre,
Arago, Cuvier and Humboldt. They
moved on to MontpelliQr, Genoa, Milan,
Turin, Florence and Geneva, and met
Volta on the journey. In that period Davy
composed his beautiful article on Pigments (see Figure 4), which was read for
him to the Royal Society. In Florence he
proved that diamond was carbon in a
crystalline form.
Lady Davy, a distant cousin of Sir
Walter Scott, was always keen to play a
leading part in London society and
hence Davy found himself involved in
rounds of social visits which, with his
long journeys abroad, allowed no time
for continuous scientific effort. In 1812,
however, he published his “Elements of
Chemical Philosophy”, the finest part of
which was a brilliant sketch of the history of chemistry, which Berzelius considered a masterpiece. Davy’s marriage
turned out not to be a happy one. There
was no open breach, but as the years
passed it was noticeable that they spent
less and less time together (he was
alone in Geneva when he died, though
Lady Davy tried desperately hard to
reach him before his death).
Davy, who wrote fluently and with lapidary style, published extensively
throughout his life. Even during his
“social rounds” he organised his literary
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ChemPhysChem 2008, 9, 59 – 66
ESSAY
output well. His “Elements of Agricultural
Chemistry”, alluded to earlier (see
Figure 3), was published in 1813. Later in
life he published “Salmonia: Or Days of
Fly Fishing” (1828), and from 1828 to the
time of his death (on 29th May, 1829) he
was engaged in writing “Consolations in
Travel” or “The Last Days of a Philosopher”, which was published posthumously in 1830.
The Miners’ Safety Lamp
Upon Davy and Faraday’s return from
the Continental tour (May 1815), Davy
began to study the problem of explosions due to fire-damp and loss of life in
coal mines. When approached by coal
mine (colliery) owners to tackle this
enormous problem, Davy’s response was
quick and generous, writing “It will give
me great pleasure if my chemical knowledge can be of any use in an inquiry so interesting to humanity”. This response reflects his earnest desire to benefit his
fellow men.
Davy quickly established that firedamp is methane. He also found out
that it was most explosive when mixed
with seven or eight times its volume of
air. A key experiment was to examine
the expansion of a mixture of methane
and air when it exploded and how the
explosion was conveyed through an
aperture from one container to another
filled with the explosive mixture. He discovered that if the communication between the vessels was long enough, and
of sufficiently small diameter, the explosion would not pass from one container
to the other. He correctly deduced that
this was due to the cooling effect of the
connecting tube.
He then set out (with some help from
Faraday) to design his first safety lamp, a
closed lantern to which the entry of air
was limited by narrow tubes and in
which the chimney was similarly protected. Tested in an explosive mixture, the
flame in this lamp at first increased in
size and was then extinguished. Such a
lamp could therefore be safe and could
also be used to detect the presence of
fire-damp. He produced his safety lamp
in a matter of just two weeks!
At a public dinner organised in his
honour in Newcastle in 1817, Davy was
ChemPhysChem 2008, 9, 59 – 66
presented with a dinner service of silver
plate to mark the appreciation of the
mine owners and others. In due course,
this was bequeathed to the Royal Society to be melted down and sold to realise a sum of money to be used to found
the Davy Medal (which is awarded annually by the Royal Society for the most important discovery in chemistry).
Stimulated by the work for his Safety
Lamp, Davy continued his researches on
the science of flames, making fundamental observation which laid the foundation for the study of combustion as a
branch of chemical science. In the
course of these he discovered the catalytic properties of platinum, and in some
experimental forms used this to enhance
the light from his safety lamp. Davy’s
name is most universally associated with
his invention of the Miners’ Safety Lamp.
John Playfair, who had once courted
Jane Apreece, generously wrote “… it
may fairly be said that there is hardly in
the whole compass of art of science a
single invention of which we would rather
wish to be the author”.
Davy the Poet
At Bristol, Davy had the good fortune to
become friends with the eminent English
poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge and
Southey, who were all taken by his remarkable talents and skills. Much later,
during his days at the Royal Institution,
it was said of Davy (by Coleridge) “that
had he (Davy) not been the first chemist,
he would have been the first poet of his
age”. And Coleridge said he went to
listen to Davy lecturing at the Royal Institution “to renew my stock of metaphors”.
Davy’s brother, John, who in 1836
published (in two volumes) the “Memoirs
of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy” tells us[1c]
that:
“At the age of seventeen he (Davy)
became desperately enamoured of a
young French lady, at the time resident at
Penzance, to whom he addressed numerous sonnets; but these, like the passion
that produced them, have long since been
extinct”.
John Davy also notes[1c] that his brother’s first poetic production bears the
F 2008 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
date of 1795 and is entitled “The Sons of
Genius”. The last three verses (out of
thirty two) read:
Like yon proud rocks amidst the sea of
time,
Superior, scorning all the billows’ rage,
The living sons of Genius stand sublime,
Th’ immortal children of another age.
For those exist whose pure ethereal minds,
Imbibing portions of celestial day,
Scorn all terrestrial cares, all mean designs,
As bright-eyed eagles scorn the lunar ray.
Their’s is the glory of a lasting name,
The meed of Genius and her living fires,
Their’s is the laurel of eternal fame,
And their’s the sweetness of the Muse’s
lyres.
The whole poem appeared in 1799 in
the Annual Anthology edited by Southey
in Bristol. Davy’s friendship with Coleridge, established ostensibly via Beddoes’s wife, who was the sister of the wellknown author Maria Edgeworth, led to
his being asked by Wordsworth, then in
the Lake District, to oversee the publishing of the second edition of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.
Towards the end of his short and meteoric life Davy composed the following
lines:
And as in sweetest soundest slumber
The mind enjoys its happiest dreams
And in the stillest night we number
Thousands of worlds in starlight beams.
So we may hope the undying spirit
In
quitting
its
decaying
form
Breaks forth new glory to inherit
As lightening from the gloomy storm.
For Davy, however, scientific discovery
was glorious. Levere noted[3] … “… the
achievements were for Davy higher than
those of poetic imagination precisely because the former bore fruit while the latter
were brilliant but materially barren.” Coleridge[3, 15] once described Shakespeare’s
writings as nature realised in poetry, and
Davy’s chemistry as poetry realised in
nature. According to Levere, Davy would
have undoubtedly denied[3] that there
was such symmetry between poetry and
science!
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65
J. M. Thomas, P. P. Edwards and V. L. Kuznetsov
The Verdict on Davy
Davy’s contributions to the world did
not end with his own. It was Davy who
“discovered” Faraday,[16] and since their
lives are both inextricably implicated in
the affairs of the Royal Institution, historians have always tended to compare
Davy and Faraday. This is how Bence
Jones, who wrote “The Life and Letters of
Faraday” in 1870, saw them:
“Wherever a true comparison between
these two Nobles of the (Royal) Institution
can be made, it will probably be seen that
the genius of Davy has been hid by the
perfection of Faraday. Incomparably superior as Faraday was in unselfishness, exactness and perseverance, and in many
other respects also, yet certainly in originality and eloquence he was inferior to
Davy, and in love of research he was by
no means his superior. Davy from his earliest energy to his latest feebleness, loved
research, and notwithstanding his marriage, his temper, and his early death, he
first gained for the R.I. that great reputation for original discovery which has been
and is the foundation of his success.”
With the perspective of time, most
commentators would agree that Davy
and Faraday were unquestionably men
of genius—experimentalists and visionaries of extraordinary intellect and ability.
Specific comments by some of the
giants of chemistry merit recollection.
Thus, in 1896 Ostwald, the father of
physical chemistry, once noted: “Among
the many investigators who began to experiment with Volta’s pile, we find one
who soon left the others completely in the
shade: Humphry Davy… His earliest
papers show his remarkable originality.”
Sir Harold Hartley, the British chemist
and chemical engineer, writing in 1965
said:[1c]
“Fortune had smiled on Davy, perhaps too
kindly in his younger years, and left him
66
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eager for praise, jealous of rivals and anxious to shine in every field. Those were his
failings, but withal his romantic genius
made an enduring mark. We can leave
him with the epitaph Berzelius wrote
when, after Davy’s death, he had tied up,
with sadness and regrets, the slender
bundle of their broken correspondence, he
wrote upon it ‘sitt tidehrarfs stçrste chemist’—the greatest chemist of his time”.
One aspect of Hartley’s “doubleedged” praise of Davy[1c] undoubtedly reflects Berzelius’ view in recognising the
supreme greatness of Davy, but this appears tinged with the view that “…he
left only brilliant fragments”. But oh, what
fragments! Such “fragments” were derived from Davy’s underlying, unifying
brilliance of ideas of the order and simplicity of nature, and of his conviction of
the connection, perhaps even the unity,
of chemical and electrical power and
energy.
In conclusion, on this very special anniversary we have highlighted here just
some of Sir Humphry Davy’s remarkable
contributions, and what has been said of
his genius and creativity. Indeed, one
must also reflect that when he was only
32 he was already responsible for over a
decade of world-changing discoveries;
dazzling accomplishments undimmed by
the passage of time.
And we leave the final words to
Humphry Davy himself. In his notebook,
as a youth of 17 in Penzance he
wrote:[17]
“I have neither riches, nor power, nor birth
to recommend me. Yet if I live, I trust I
shall not be of less service to mankind
and my friends, than had I been born with
these advantages”.
Keywords: electrochemistry · chemist ·
history of science · Humphry Davy ·
physicist
[1] Many commentaries exist on the life and
contributions of Sir Humphry Davy. For this
essay three references were particularly relevant; these are: a) R. King, Humphry Davy,
Royal Institution, London, 1978; b) H. Hartley, Humphry Davy, Nelson, London, 1966;
c) Science and the Sons of Genius: Studies on
Humphry Davy (Ed.:S. Forgan), Science Reviews, London, 1980.
We cite here primarily references to commentaries on Davy’s work and their impact.
[2] D. I. Mendeleev, The Principles of Chemistry,
3rd English ed., Vol. 1, Longmans, Green and
Co., London, 1905, p. 551.
[3] T. H. Levere in Science and the Sons of
Genius: Studies on Humphry Davy (Ed.: S.
Forgan), Science Reviews, London, 1980.
[4] Oxymuriatic acid, even when exposed to incandescent carbon, yielded no oxide of
carbon.
[5] Perhaps this belief still lingers; indeed, Sauerare the German and Russian
stoff and
names for oxygen—a substance producing
acids.
[6] H. Davy, Laboratory notebook, Nov. 14,
1808, as discovered by P. P. Edwards, Adv.
Inorg. Chem. Radiochem. 1982, 25, 135.
[7] M. Bixon, J. Jortner, Adv. Chem. Phys. 1999,
106, 35.
[8] I-R. Lee, W. Lee, A. H. Zewail, ChemPhysChem
2008, 9, 83–88.
[9] This book is 323 pages long and also contains 97 Appendixes on the properties of numerous native British and foreign grasses.
[10] Antonio Canova (1757–1822), Italian sculptor.
[11] H. Davy, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London 1807,
97, 1–56. (The 1806 Bakerian Lecture).
[12] H. Davy, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London 1808,
98, 1–44. (The 1807 Bakerian Lecture).
[13] a) P. P. Edwards, M. J. Sienko, Int. Rev. Phys.
Chem. 1983, 3, 83–137; b) P. P. Edwards in
The New Chemistry (Ed.: N. Hall), Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 85–
114.
[14] P. Levi, The Periodic Table, Schocken, New
York 1984, p. 58.
[15] J. M. Thomas, Michael Faraday and the Royal
Institution: The Genius of Man and Place, IoP
Publishing, Bristol, 1991 (now published by
Taylor & Francis). See also J. M. Thomas, Proc.
Am. Philos. Soc. 2006, 150, 523.
[16] See also K. Coburn, Proc. R. Inst. G. B. 1973,
46, 45.
[17] W. A. Stinton, Sir Humphry Davy: 1778 – 1978:
A Bicentenary Remembrance, Lecture given at
the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 1978.
Received: October 12, 2007
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