Humphry Davy, the son of a wood carver, was born in Cornwall, then a remote region of southwest England. Educated at the local grammar school, he was later apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon in Penzance. He was 19 before he began the study of chemistry by reading Lavoisier’s Traite Elementaire, published eight years earlier. Within five years he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at The Royal Institution in London.

Davy’s first scientific work involved an investigation of the therapeutic value of the inhalation of various gases. He used himself as a guinea pig, and since nitric oxide and carbon monoxide as well as the more risible nitrous oxide were among the gases studied, it is surprising he survived to write on their physiological and psychological effects. It was about this time that Davy became acquainted with Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth. His love of literature was lifelong.

At The Royal Institution, Davy exploited the recently discovered voltaic pile to lay the qualitative foundations of electrochemistry. He usually managed to stay half a step ahead of Berzelius and Hisinger in Sweden and Thenard and Gay-Lussac in France. In a “capital experiment” elemental potassium was first isolated in 1807; this was soon followed by sodium, barium, calcium, strontium, and magnesium. Since Davy later isolated crude boron and silicon and showed that the green gas first isolated by Scheele was in fact elemental chlorine, he had a hand in the discovery of a substantial portion of the periodic table.

In 1813 Davy set out for an 18-month tour of Europe, taking with him as companion/valet the young Michael Faraday. Faraday was to succeed Davy at The Royal Institution and it has been unfairly suggested that Davy’s greatest discovery was Michael Faraday. Strictly as a chemist, Davy was the greater of the two. Davy’s last years were sad and in some ways anti-climactic, comprised of brief periods of scientific creativity interspersed with travel, salmon fishing, and philosophizing.

References
DSB, Vol. III, pp. 537-547.
David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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