Sir Humphry Davy: His Life, Letters and Notebooks

by Dr Andrew Lacey (Lancaster University). Best-remembered today for his invention of the miners’ safety lamp, Davy had many other claims to fame, including the isolation of no fewer than seven new chemical elements, and his research into the therapeutic use of gases – he was the first to inhale nitrous oxide (laughing gas). But science was only a part of his life – he also wrote poetry, philosophical dialogues, and accounts of his travels. When he died, in 1829, he left behind a large number of letters and notebooks, most of which had remained unpublished ever since. That was until Dr Lacey, a Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University, collated all the letters into a four-volume anthology, which was published in 2020 by OUP.

Now he’s taking on an even bigger challenge, the ‘Davy Notebooks Project’ – to digitise all of the 70+ notebooks – a mammoth task for which he’s been recruiting an army of transcribers from, among other places, the U3A. In this talk, he’ll explore the key periods in Davy’s life, illuminated by selected passages from those letters and notebooks. Maybe some of you might like to take part in his project.

To view the recording, click here… ‘Sir Humphry Davy’ video

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