Humphry Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, FRS, MRIA, FGS (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) 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. Davy is also credited with discovering clathrate hydrates.
Sir Humphry Davy | |
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Portrait by Thomas Phillips, 1821 | |
| Born | 17 December 1778 Penzance, Cornwall, England |
| Died | 29 May 1829 (aged 50) Geneva, Switzerland |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Chemistry |
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| 23rd President of the Royal Society | |
| In office 1820–1827 | |
| Preceded by | William Hyde Wollaston |
| Succeeded by | Davies Gilbert |
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| Articles about |
| Electromagnetism |
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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 (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), Fellow of the Geological Society (FGS), and a member of the American Philosophical Society (elected 1810). 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."