Davy, Sir Humphry, Baronet
b. Dec. 17, 1778, Penzance, Cornwall, Eng.
d. May 29, 1829, Geneva
English chemist who discovered several chemical elements
(including sodium and potassium) and compounds, and
became one of the greatest exponents of the scientific
method. Davy is best remembered for his contributions to
the understanding of electrochemistry and for his invention
of a safety lamp for miners.
Early life
Davy was the elder son of middle-class parents, who owned an estate in Ludgvan. He was
educated at the grammar school innearby Penzance and, in 1793, at Truro. In 1795, a year
after the death of his father, Robert, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary, J.
Binghan Borlase, and he hoped eventually to qualify in medicine. An exuberant,
affectionate, and popular lad, of quick wit and lively imagination, he was fond of
composing verses, sketching, making fireworks, fishing, shooting, and collecting minerals.
He loved to wander, one pocket filled with fishing tackle and the other with rock
specimens; he never lost his intense love of nature and, particularly, of mountain and water
scenery.
While still a youth, ingenuous and somewhat impetuous, Davy had plans for a volume of
poems, but he began the serious study of science in 1797, and these visions "fled before the
voice of truth." After reading Antoine Lavoisier's "Traite Elementaire", Davy in 1797
became interested in chemistry. He was befriended by Davies Giddy (later Gilbert;
president of the Royal Society, 1827-30), who offered him the use of his library in Tradea
and took him to a chemistry laboratory that was well equipped for that day. There he
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formed strongly independent views on topics of the moment, such as the nature of heat,
light, and electricity and the chemical and physical doctrines of A.-L. Lavoisier.
In his small private laboratory, he prepared and inhaled nitrous oxide
(laughing gas), in order to test a claim that it was the "principle of
contagion," that is, caused diseases. On Gilbert's recommendation,
he was appointed (1798) chemical superintendent of the Pneumatic
Institution, founded at Clifton to inquire into the possible therapeutic
uses of various gases. Davy attacked the problem with characteristic
enthusiasm, evincing an outstanding talent for experimental inquiry.
He investigated the composition of the oxides and acids of nitrogen,
as well as ammonia, and persuaded his scientific and literary friends,
including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and P.M.
Roget, to report the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide. He nearly lost
his own life inhaling water gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon
monoxide sometimes used as fuel. The account of his work,
published as Researches, Chemical and Philosophical (1800),
immediately established his reputation, and he was invited to lecture
at the newly founded Royal Institution of Great Britain in London,
where he moved in 1801, with the promise of help from the British-
American scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson (Count von Rumford),
Humphry Davy in Bristol the British naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, and the English chemist and
ca. 1800, City Museum physicist Henry Cavendish in furthering his researches; e.g., on
voltaic cells, early forms of electric batteries. His carefully prepared
and rehearsed lectures rapidly became important social functions and
added greatly to the prestige of science and the institution.
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In 1802 he became professor of chemistry. His duties included a
special study of tanning: he found catechu, the extract of a
tropical plant, as effective as and cheaper than the usual oak
extracts, and his published account was long used as a tanner's
guide. In 1803 he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society
and an honorary member of the Dublin Society and delivered
the first of an annual series of lectures before the board of
agriculture. This led to his Elements of Agricultural Chemistry
(1813), the only systematic work available for many years. For
his researches on voltaic cells, tanning, and mineral analysis, he
received the Copley Medal in 1805. He was elected secretary of
the Royal Society in 1807.
Davy in the age of 23 years
Sir Humphry Davy, 1803, Sir Humphry Davy, 1821,
Sir Humphry Davy, Bt, ca. 1821
painted by Henry Howard, painted by Thomas Phillips,
after Sir Thomas Lawrence,
National Portrait Gallery, London National Portrait Gallery, London
National Portrait Gallery, London
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.
A young Humphry Davy gleefully
works the bellows in this caricature
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by James Gillray of experiments
with laughing gas at the Royal
Institution. The Lecturer is Thomas
Garret, Davy's predecessor as
professor of chemistry. Benjamin
Thompson, Count Rumford, the
founder of the Royal Institution,
stands at the doorway.
Major discoveries
Davy early concluded that the production of electricity in simple electrolytic cells resulted
from chemical action and that chemical combination occurred between substances of
opposite charge. He therefore reasoned that electrolysis, the interactions of electric currents
with chemical compounds, offered the most likely means of decomposing all substances to
their elements. These views were explained in 1806 in his lecture "On Some Chemical
Agencies of Electricity," for which, despite the fact that England and France were at war, he
received the Napoleon Prize from the Institut de France (1807). This work led directly 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 and the untenability of the earlier name
(oxymuriatic acid) for chlorine; this negated Lavoisier's theory that all acids contained
oxygen. He explained the bleaching action of chlorine (through its liberation of oxygen
from water) and discovered two of its oxides (1811 and 1815), but his views on the nature
of chlorine were disputed. He was not aware that chlorine is a chemical element, and
experiments designed to reveal oxygen in chlorine failed.
In 1810 and 1811 he lectured to large audiences at Dublin (on agricultural chemistry, the
elements of chemical philosophy, geology) and received £1,275 in fees, as well as the
honorary degree of LL.D., from Trinity College. In 1812 he was knighted by the Prince
Regent (April 8), delivered a farewell lecture to members of the Royal Institution (April 9),
and married Jane Apreece, a wealthy widow well known in social and literary circles in
England and Scotland (April 11). He also published the first part of the Elements of
Chemical Philosophy, which contained much of his own work; his plan was too ambitious,
however, and nothing further appeared. Its completion, according to a Swedish chemist, J.J.
Berzelius, would have "advanced the science of chemistry a full century."
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His last important act at the Royal Institution, of which
he remained honorary professor, was to interview the
young Michael Faraday, later to become one of
England's great scientists, who became laboratory
assistant there in 1813 and accompanied the Davys on
a European tour (1813-15). By permission of
Napoleon, he travelled through France, meeting many
prominent scientists, and was presented to the empress
Marie Louise. With the aid of a small portable
laboratory and of various institutions in France and
Italy, he investigated the substance "X" (later called
iodine), whose properties and similarity to chlorine he
quickly discovered; further work on various
compounds of iodine and chlorine was done before he
reached Rome. He also analyzed many specimens of
classical pigments and proved that diamond is a form
of carbon.
The Oxides of Nitrogen
When Davy was released from his
indenture as a apprentice, he became
superintendent of the Medical Pneumatic
Institution of Bristol. This organization was
devoted to the study of the medical value of
various gases, and it was here that Davy
first made his reputation. He studied the
oxides of nitrogen and discovered the
physiological effects of nitrous oxide,
which became known as laughing gas. He
"breathed 16 quarts of the gas in seven
minutes" and became "completely
intoxicated" with it. It would be forty-five
years later before nitrous oxide would be
used as a anesthetic by dentists.
Davy in his laboratory
From a notebook that he kept at this time are analytical results that document the discovery
of nitrous oxide and that illustrate the law of multiple proportions:
"When two elements combine and form more than one compound, the masses of one
element that react with a fixed mass of the other are in the ratio of small whole
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numbers."
Grams of N
Compound Percent N Percent O reacting with
1.00 g of O
I 29.50 70.50 0.418
II 44.05 55.95 0.787
III 63.30 36.70 1.725
The ratios in the last column are proportional to 1:1.88:4.13. (The compounds analyzed are
NO2, NO, and N2O.) Today we see in data such as these a confirmation of one tenet of
Dalton's atomic theory: Compounds consist of atoms of their constituent elements
combined in small whole number ratios. But at this time Davy dismissed Dalton's theory as
"rather more ingenious than important." To Dalton's claim that "chemical analysis and
synthesis go no farther than to the separation of particles one from another, and their
reunion. No new destruction or creation of matter is within the reach of chemical agency",
Davy replied: "There is no reason to suppose that any real indestructible principle
has yet been discovered."
Electrolysis and the Alkali Metals
Davy's next and most important investigations were devoted to electrochemistry. Following
Galvani's experiments and the discovery of the voltaic pile, interest in galvanic electricity
had become widespread. The first chemical decomposition by means of the pile was carried
out in 1800 by Nicholson and Carlisle, who obtained hydrogen and oxygen from water, and
who decomposed the aqueous solutions of a variety of common salts. Davy, too, began to
example the chemical effects of electricity in 1800. He soon found that when he passed
electrical current through some substances, these substances decomposed, (a process later
called electrolysis). Thus it was certain that electrical forces could act (generate current)
only when the electrolyte was capable of oxidizing one of the metals, and that the intensity
of its effect (the voltage generated) was directly related to the reactivity of the electrolyte
with the metal. Evidently, Davy understood that the actions of electrolysis and of the
voltaic pile were the same. His work led him to propose that the elements of a chemical
compound are held together by electrical forces:
"In the present state of our knowledge, it would be useless to attempt to speculate
on the remote cause of the electrical energy . . . ; its relation to chemical affinity is,
however, sufficiently evident. May it not be identical with it, and an essential
property of matter?"
Davy must have known of Lavoisier's suggestion that the alkali earths were oxides of
unknown metals. At first, he tried to separate the metals by electrolyzing aqueous solutions
of the alkalis, but this yielded only hydrogen gas. He then tried passing current through
molten compounds, and his persistence was rewarded when he was able to separate
globules of pure metal by this means. His first successes came in 1807 with the separation
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of potassium from molten potash and of sodium from common salt. He described
potassium as particles which, when thrown into water, "skimmed about excitedly with a
hissing sound, and soon burned with a lovely lavender light." Dr. John Davy, Humphry's
brother, said that Humphry "danced around and was delirious with joy" at his discovery.
These results were presented in the Bakerian lecture of November, 1807.
Through electrolysis, Davy eventually discovered magnesium (Magnesia, a district in
Thessaly), calcium (calx, L for lime), strontium, and barium in 1808. For all these
discoveries, much groundwork had of course been done by others. Thus, Scheele had
distinguished baryta from lime in 1774, and Berzelius and Pontin had prepared calcium
amalgam by electrolyzing lime in mercury. But Davy was able to isolate the pure metals.
Davy utilized the reducing power of potassium to prepare boron, and he developed the
method of separating potassium from sodium based upon the insolubility of potassium
perchlorate and the solubility of sodium perchlorate in 97% alcohol.
Chlorine
Davy's research on chlorine is of an importance comparable
with those on the alkali metals. Chlorine was first isolated by
the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) in
1774. Scheele did not regard this pungent green gas as an
element. He referred to it as "dephlogisticated marine acid". To
Scheele, phlogiston was practically synonymous with
hydrogen, so in a curious sense, his view of chlorine was
essentially correct. Lavoisier, however, chiefly occupied with
phenomena of combustion, assumed that chlorine was an oxide
of an unknown "radical". Davy performed many experiments
to confirm the presence of oxygen.
Sir Humphry Davy
painted by James Lonsdale
He reacted "oxymuriatic acid", as the English called it, with ammonia, and found only
muriatic acid and nitrogen in the products:
3 Cl2 + 2 NH3 ------> 6 HCl + N2
He exposed the gas to white-hot carbon in an attempt to remove the oxygen as carbon
dioxide. He was never able to produce oxygen or any compound known to contain oxygen,
and he finally concluded that it was an element. He called it "chlorine" after the Greek
"chloros" meaning yellow-green, the same association with color as found in "chlorophyll".
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By a similar series of experiments, Davy showed in 1810 that muriatic acid or marine acid
was a compound only of hydrogen and chlorine, and contained no oxygen. For example, he
found that two volumes of muriatic acid react with mercury to give calomel and one
volume of hydrogen:
2 HCl + 2 Hg ------> Hg2Cl2 + H2
This put an end to Lavoisier's theory that oxygen was an essential constituent of acids.
Iodine
Iodine was first prepared in 1811 by Bernard Courtois (1777-1838) who observed purple
vapors rising from kelp ashes that he had acidified with sulfuric acid and heated. The
purple vapors condensed on a cold surface, forming nearly black crystals. Others, notably
Joseph Gay-Lussac and Humphry Davy, proved that the crystals were an element, and it
was named after the Greek iodes, meaning violet. Davy first made iodine pentoxide, a
colorless, odorless, crystalline substance of high density in 1815. It is a strong oxidizing
agent, and with oxidizible substances sometimes detonates.
I2O5 + 10 H+ + 10 e- ------> I2 + 5 HOH
Silicates
Davy developed the method for the decomposition of silicates into silica by treatment with
hot HCl.
SiO44- + 4 H+ ------> SiO2 + 2 HOH
Catalysis
Davy was evidently the first to observe that platinum induced the oxidation of alcohol
vapor in air.
Miscellaneous
In 1799, Davy did an experiment which showed that when two pieces of ice (or other
substance with a low melting point) were rubbed together they could be melted without any
other addition of heat. This experiment provided evidence that helped to disprove the
caloric theory of heat. In 1802, Thomas Wedgwood in cooperation with Sir Humphry Davy
published a paper entitled "An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings on Glass, and
Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrates of Silver". The pictures made by
this process were very temporary. As soon as the negatives were removed the pictures
turned black. Among Davy's other accomplishments are the introduction of a chemical
approach to agriculture and the tanning and mineralogy industries. He designed an Arc
Lamp and invented a process that could be used to desalinate sea water. He also designed a
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method whereby copper-clad ships could be protected by having zinc plates connected to
them.
Later years
Shortly after his return, 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 The Safety Lamp
plate (eventually sold to
Humphry Davy as painted by Sir Thomas
found the Davy Medal).
Lawrence, circa 1821, next to one of his
inventions, the miner's safety lamp,
National Portrait Gallery, London
The basic principle of the safety lamp is, that the flame is
covered by a gauze with certain meshes per square inch. On
November 1, 1816 Davy wrote in a letter to the Royal
Society: "This invention consists in covering or surrounding
the flame of a lamp or a candle by a wire sieve". The wire
sieve was fitted with 625 apertures in a square inch and the
wire was 1/70 inch thick. Davy didn't ask for a patent. He
earned the merit to have saved miner's life through his efforts
in inventing safer lights. Davy wrote 1816: "No, my good Davy with his
friend, I never thought of such a thing; my sole object was to lamp in
serve the cause of humanity, and if I succeeded I am amply a mine
rewarded in the gratifying of having done so".
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After being created a baronet in 1818, he again went to Italy,
inquiring into volcanic action and trying unsuccessfully to
find a way of unrolling the papyri found at Herculaneum. In
1820 he became president of the Royal Society, a position he
held until 1827. In 1823-25 he was associated with the
politician and writer John Wilson Croker in founding the
Athenaeum Club, of which he was an original trustee, and
with the colonial governor Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in
founding the Zoological Society and in furthering the scheme
for zoological gardens in Regent's Park, London (opened in
1828). During this period, he examined magnetic phenomena
caused by electricity and electrochemical methods for
preventing saltwater corrosion of copper sheathing on ships
by means of iron and zinc plates. Though the protective
principles were made clear, considerable fouling occurred,
and the method's failure greatly vexed him. But he was, as he
said, "burned out." His Bakerian lecture for 1826, "On the
Relation of Electrical and Chemical Changes," contained his
last known thoughts on electrochemistry and earned him the
Royal Society's Royal Medal.
Association with Michael Faraday
In 1801, the Royal Institution in London engaged Davy as a public lecturer. Michael
Faraday (1791-1867) began attending Davy's lectures in 1810. In December, 1811, Faraday
impressed Davy by sending him copious bound notes of these lectures, including exact
drawing of Davy's apparatus. The previous October, Davy had been temporarily blinded by
an explosion in his laboratory, and he needed help. He hired Faraday at once, beginning a
close personal and professional association that lasted for years. Davy twice opposed the
election of Faraday to fellowship in the Royal Society. At one point he objected to
honoring Faraday for achieving the first liquefication of chlorine, claiming that he himself
deserved credit for the feat. Another time, Davy said his opposition was due to his belief
that William Wollaston (1766-1828) had preceded Faraday in discovering electromagnetic
rotation. Perhaps Davy had simply become envious of his (successful) former assistant.
Faraday did finally become a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1824.
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In 1827, Davy became seriously ill. The illness was later attributed to
his inhalation of many gases over the years. Davy's health was by then
failing rapidly; in 1827 he departed for Europe and, in the summer, was
forced to resign the presidency of the Royal Society, being succeeded by
Davies Gilbert. Having to forgo business and field sports, Davy wrote
Salmonia: or Days of Fly Fishing (1828), a book on fishing (after the
manner of Izaak Walton) that contained engravings from his own
drawings. After a last, short visit to England, he returned to Italy,
settling at Rome in February 1829--"a ruin amongst ruins." Though
partly paralyzed through stroke, he spent his last months writing a series
Sir Humphry Davy, ca 1875,
of dialogues, published posthumously as Consolations in Travel, or the
sculpture by Albert Bruce-
Last Days of a Philosopher (1830). While in Rome, he had a heart attack
Joy,
and he later died on May 29, 1829 in Geneva, Switzerland.
National Portrait Gallery,
London
Humphry Davy Medal, The Royal Society, London
The award is made annually for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of
chemistry. The medal is made of bronze and the winner also receives a gift of £1000.
A medal memorizing Davy
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Bibliography
J.A. Paris, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy (1831), for more than a century the standard
work on Davy's life;
Sir H. Hartley, Humphry Davy (1966), an extremely useful account of Davy's life that
complements Paris' biography but with changed emphases resulting from the passage of
135 years.
Craven, G. J., The Scientific Achievements of Sir Humphry Davy (1930);
Hartley, Sir Harold, Humphry Davy (1966); Knight, David, Humphry Davy, Science and
Power
(1992);
Treneer, Anne, The Mercurial Chemist: A Life of Sir Humphry Davy (1963).
You could benefit reading the original Davy's papers available in the Internet, the first
describing his discovery of sodium and potassium and the second on chlorine chemistry,
from the ChemTeam at Diamond Bar High School:
Humphry Davy, On Some New Phenomena of Chemical Changes Produced by
Electricity, Particularly the Decomposition of Fixed Alkalies, and the Exhibition of the
New Substances which Constitute their Bases: and on the General Nature of Alkaline
Bodies,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1808.
Humphry Davy, On a Combination of Oxymuriatic Gas and Oxygene Gas,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1811, 101, 155-162.
A chaper of a book about Davy.
This text has been compiled from the biographies of Davy available in the Internet:
( 1, 2, 3 ).
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