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Humphry Davy Facts & Worksheets

A British chemist and inventor, Humphry Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrochemistry, who applied electrolysis to isolate different elements from the compounds in which they naturally occur.

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A British chemist and inventor, Humphry Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrochemistry, who applied electrolysis to isolate different elements from the compounds in which they naturally occur. Not only a baronet, Davy was also a President of the Royal Society, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Fellow of the Geological Society.

See the fact file below for more information on the Humphry Davy or alternatively, you can download our 23-page Humphry Davy worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

  • Born on 17 December 1778 in Penzance, Cornwall, in the Kingdom of Great Britain, Sir Humphry Davy was the eldest of five children of a Robert Davy, a woodcarver, and his wife, Grace Millet.
  • His brother, John, wrote that the society they grew up in was described as an “almost unbounded credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous… Amongst the middle and higher classes, there was little taste for literature, and still less for science… Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cockfighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in.”
  • At six years old, Davy attended a grammar school at Penzance. After three years, his family departed to Varfell, near Ludgvan, where Davy met and stayed with John Tonkin, his godfather and later his guardian.
  • He left Penzance grammar school in 1793, and Tonkin sponsored Davy’s studies as he attended Truro Grammar School to finish his education under the Rev. Dr. Cardew.
  • His friends were amused by his poetry and storytelling skills, as he entertained them on Valentines and narrated tales from One Thousand and One Nights.
  • Davy’s father died in 1794, and he was encouraged by Tonkin to be an apprentice of John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a practice in Penzance. His legal contract which reflects or covers a debt or purchase obligation ended on 10 February 1795.
  • In the apothecary’s infirmary, he became a chemist, and performed his earliest chemical experiments in an attic in Tonkin’s house.
  • A refugee priest taught him French, and in 1797, when he was already able to read and understand Lavoisier’s Traité élémentaire de chimie, much of his successive works can be seen as arguing against Lavoisier’s work and the dominance of French chemists

POETRY

  • As a poet, he wrote over 160 manuscript poems, most of which were written in his personal notebooks and were unpublished. His literary works reflected his insights and perspectives on his career and some aspects of human life. He also had themes tackling human endeavours, death, metaphysics, geology, natural theology, and chemistry.
  • British physician John Ayrton Paris commended young Davy’s poetry, saying that his works “bear the stamp of lofty genius.”
  • His first preserved poem, The Sons of Genius, written in 1795 revolved around the natural immaturity of youth. Other poems written in the next years, especially On the Mount’s Bay and St. Michael’s Mount, are descriptive verses, exhibiting sensibility but without true poetic imagination.

EARLY SCIENTIFIC INTERESTS

  • Cornish engineer, author, and politician Davies Giddy met Davy in Penzance, and invited him over to his house at Tredrea, where he allowed him to use his library. There, he met Dr. Edwards, a lecturer in chemistry at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, who permitted Davy to use his laboratory.
  • Gregory Watt, son of James Watt, went to Penzance and stayed at Davy’s house, where he became Humphry’s friend and soon gave him pieces of advice in chemistry.
  • In 1802, Davy possessed what was then, the most powerful electrical battery in the world at the Royal Institution. With it, he invented the first incandescent light by letting electric current flow through a thin strip of platinum, since this metal had an intensely high melting point.
  • In 1806, he was already able to show a much more form of electric lighting to the Royal Society in London – an early form of arc light which obtained illumination from an electric arc installed between two charcoal rods.

PNEUMATIC INSTITUTION

  • On 2 October 1798, Davy entered the Pneumatic Institution at Bristol, where he used to monitor and investigate medical powers of factitious air and gases.
  • In his stay in Bristol, he met the Earl of Durhma, who lived in the institution for his health, and formed close ties with Gregory Watt, James Watt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey, all of whom became exposed to nitrous oxide, or what is known as laughing gas.
  • James Watt assembled a portable gas chamber to cater Davy’s experiments with the inhalation of laughing gas. At one point, the gas was mixed with wine to assess its efficacy as a cure for hangover.
  • Davy spent most of his time working in the laboratory and developed a long romantic friendship with Anna Deddoes, who went with him on his walks around the city. Maurice Hindle, a critic, was the first person to disclose Davy and Anna’s exchange of written poems.
  • His gas experiments imposed a number of risks. His inhalation of laughing gas, which may have mixed with air in the mouth to form nitric acid, caused a serious injury in the mucous membrane, and in his attempt to inhale four quarts of “pure hydrocarbonate” gas in one of his trials with carbon monoxide, he “seemed sinking into annihilation.”
  • In 1799, Beddoes and Davy issued Contributions to physical and medical knowledge, principally from the west of England and Essays on heat, light, and the combinations of light, with a new theory of respiration. On the generation of oxygen gas, and the causes of the colors of organic beings, which were harshly criticized as these publications contained immature hypotheses.
  • These objections, however, caused him to improve his experimental approaches, and in 1800, he informed Gilbert that he had been “repeating the galvanic experiments with success”, publishing his Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration, which garnered positive feedbacks.

ROYAL INSTITUTION

  • In February 1801, Davy was questioned by the committee of the Royal Institution, and his panelists were Joseph Banks, Benjamin Thompson, and Henry Cavendish.
  • On 25 April 1801, he gave his first lecture on galvanism. He and Coleridge had a number of conversations about the nature of human knowledge and progress, and his lectures provided a vision of human civilization which became successful because of scientific discoveries.
  • As his series of lectures on galvanism ended, he moved forward to a new topic on Agricultural Chemistry, as his popularity continued to skyrocket.
  • In June 1802, at the age of 23, he was nominated to full lecturer at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERY OF NEW ELEMENTS

  • Davy was among the proponents in the field of electrolysis using the voltaic pile to divide common compounds, resulting in the discovery of new elements.
  • He performed electrolysis in molten salts and found new metals, including sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements called alkali metals.
  • In 1807, he detected potassium, deriving it from caustic potash (KOH).
  • Observations in his successive experiments led to him isolating boron in 1809.
  • A year later, he gave chlorine its current name, which had Greek origins translating to “green-yellow”, and insisted that this should be classified an element.
  • As he went back to England in 1815, he started experimenting with lamps that could be used safely inside coal mines.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH

  • In 1818, he bagged the baronetcy title, and a year later, he became the president of the Royal Society.
  • He spent his remaining months writing Consolations in Travel, which included his thoughts on science and philosophy.
  • On 29 May 1829, Davy died inside a hotel room in Geneva, Switzerland.

Humphry Davy Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Humphry Davy across 23 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Humphry Davy worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Humphry Davy who was a pioneer in the field of electrochemistry, who applied electrolysis to isolate different elements from the compounds in which they naturally occur. Not only a baronet, Davy was also a President of the Royal Society, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Fellow of the Geological Society.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Humphry Davy Facts
  • That English Chemist
  • Test Yourself
  • Davy Lamp
  • More on Electrolysis
  • Matching Compounds
  • Pioneers of New Elements
  • All About Chlorine
  • A Letter to Davy
  • Quote From Davy
  • Your Own Invention

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Use With Any Curriculum

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