![]() In 1807 he electrolyzed slightly damp fused potash and then soda-substances that had previously resisted decomposition and hence were thought by some to be elements-and isolated potassium and sodium. Discovering New ElementsĪmong his many accomplishments Davy discovered several new elements. His electrochemical experiments led him to propose that the tendency of one substance to react preferentially with other substances-its “affinity”-is electrical in nature. Soon after the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta announced the electric pile-an early type of battery-in 1800, Davy rushed into this new field and correctly realized that the production of electricity depended on a chemical reaction taking place. ![]() In 1801 Davy was appointed-first as a lecturer, then as a professor of chemistry-to the Royal Institution in London, which he molded into a center for advanced research and for polished demonstration lectures delivered to audiences largely made up of fashionable gentlemen and ladies. His recommendation that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) be employed as an anesthetic in minor surgical operations was ignored, but inhaling the gas became the highlight of contemporary social gatherings. ![]() Beddoes, 1799) was a refutation of Lavoisier’s caloric, arguing, among other points, that heat is motion but light is matter.īut his early reputation was made by his book Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide. ![]() Science History Institute/Gregory Tobiasĭavy’s earliest published work (“An Essay on Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light,” in Contributions to Physical and Medical Knowledge, Principally from the West of England, ed. A young Humphry Davy gleefully works the bellows in this caricature by James Gillray of experiments with laughing gas at the Royal Institution. ![]()
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