Famous Men of Science

In October, 1806, he discovered that potash and soda can be decomposed, with potassium and sodium as resultant bases.

When he saw the minute globules of potassium burst through the crust of potash, and take fire as they entered the atmosphere, he is said to have bounded about the room in ecstatic delight, some time elapsing before he could compose himself sufficiently to go on with his experiment.

He had worked so constantly that he became very ill, and for several weeks his life was despaired of. All London was agitated over the expected death of the young chemist. Bulletins were prepared by the physicians morning, noon, and night, for the scores who came to ask concerning him.

When he had recovered and returned to his work, the Royal Institution provided him with a voltaic battery of six hundred double plates of four inches square, four times as powerful as any that had been constructed, and not long after, one of two thousand plates. Scientific papers were constantly coming from his pen. He soon decomposed boracic acid with the battery. By heating boron in oxygen, it burnt, and was reconverted into boracic acid. In his experiments with muriatic acid gas he found chlorine to be a simple substance, and discovered euchlorine, a compound of chlorine and oxygen.

He had already been made a fellow of the Royal Society at twenty-five, and at twenty-nine one of the secretaries. His lectures were crowded, as ever, by a thousand people. The Dublin Society now invited him to give courses of lectures in 1810 and 1811, which he did, ticket-holders each paying ten dollars for a course. So difficult was it to gain admission to the lectures that many offered from fifty to a hundred dollars for a course ticket!

He writes these facts to his mother, and adds, "This is merely for your eye: it may please you to know that your son is not unpopular or useless. Every person here, from the highest to the lowest, shows me every attention and kindness.

"I shall come to see you as soon as I can. I hear with infinite delight of your health, and I hope Heaven will continue to preserve and bless a mother who deserves so well of her children."

Trinity College, Dublin, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. Cuvier said of him: "Davy, not yet thirty-two, in the opinion of all who could judge of such labors, held the first rank among the chemists of this or of any other age." The National Institute of France had awarded him the prize given by Napoleon to the greatest discovery by the means of galvanism.

And yet all this fame and honor had been won by incessant labor. He writes to his mother: "At present, except when I resolve to be idle for health's sake, I devote every moment to labors which I hope will not be wholly ineffectual in benefiting society, and which will not be wholly inglorious for my country hereafter; and the feeling of this is the reward which will continue to keep me employed."

His brother John, who had been for three years at the Royal Institution, now went to Edinburgh to study medicine. Davy writes him: "Let no difficulties alarm you, you may be what you please. Trust me, I know what your powers are. Preserve the dignity of your mind, and the purity of your moral conduct. You set sail with a fair wind on the ocean of life. You have great talents, good feelings, and an unbroken and an uncorrupted spirit. Move straight forward on to moral and intellectual excellence. Let no example induce you to violate decorum, – no ridicule prevent you from guarding against sensuality or vice. Live in such a way that you can always say, the whole world may know what I am doing."

In 1812 Davy was knighted by the Prince Regent. Only thirty-three, and he had come to great renown!

And now an important change was to come into his life. During the preceding year he had become acquainted with Mrs. Appreece, towards whom esteem gradually ripened into affection. When their marriage had been decided upon, he wrote his mother: "I am the happiest of men, in the hope of a union with a woman equally distinguished for virtues, talents, and accomplishments… You, I am sure, will sympathize in my happiness. I believe I should never have married but for this charming woman, whose views and whose tastes coincide with my own, and who is eminently qualified to promote my best efforts and objects in life."

To his brother he writes: "I have been very miserable. The lady whom I love best of any human beings has been very ill. She is now well, and I am happy. Mrs. Appreece has consented to marry me: and when the event takes place I shall not envy kings, princes, or potentates… I am going to be married to-morrow; and I have a fair prospect of happiness, with the most amiable and intellectual woman I have ever known." How love idealizes all things, makes a new heaven and a new earth for us! He found in her the two needed qualities for happiness; amiability, without which the life of a man is usually made wretched, and intellectuality, without which a cultivated man can have little companionship in a wife.

The marriage seems to have been a happy one, for he writes to John later: "Lady D. is a noble creature, and every day adds to my contentment by the powers of her understanding, and her amiable and delightful tones of feeling."

Like the wife of Herschel, she was a wealthy widow, so that after his marriage Davy was enabled to travel, and devote himself wholly to original investigation. He resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution after twelve most useful years.

His "Elements of Chemical Philosophy" was now published, and dedicated to Lady Davy. After a pleasure trip with his wife to the highlands of Scotland, taking his portable chemical apparatus with him for study, they took a journey to France, Italy, Sicily, and Germany, accompanied by Mr. Michael Faraday, afterward so celebrated, then "his assistant in experiments and writing."

In Paris, where he spent two months, he discovered that iodine is a simple substance, analogous to chlorine. Here he became the intimate friend of many distinguished men. "Humboldt," he said, "was one of the most agreeable men I have ever known; social, modest, full of intelligence, with facilities of every kind; almost too fluent in conversation. His travels display his spirit of enterprise. His works are monuments of the variety of his knowledge and resources."

Gay-Lussac he placed "at the head of the living chemists of France."

At Fontainebleau, on the banks of the Rhone, at Mont Blanc, at Vaucluse, Sir Humphrey's artistic nature voiced itself in song. He had the poet's temperament, intense, quick, earnest, ardent, aspiring. He loved science, and paid her homage; he loved poetry, and made her his rest and solace and soul-companion.

At Florence he studied the diamond, and found it merely crystallized carbon. At Rome he met Canova, who showed him great attention, and to whom he wrote this sonnet: —

"Thou wast a light of brightness in an age
When Italy was in the night of art:
She was thy country; but the world thy stage,
On which thou actedst thy creative part.
Blameless thy life – thy manners, playful, mild,
Master in art, but Nature's simplest child.
Phidias of Rome! like him thou stand'st sublime:
And after artists shall essay to climb
To that high temple where thou dwell'st alone,
Amidst the trophies thou from time hast won.
Generous to all, but most to rising merit;
By nobler praise awakening the spirit;
Yet all unconscious of the eternal fame,
The light of glory circling round thy name!"

At Milan he met Volta, nearly seventy years old. "His conversation was not brilliant," he said; "his views rather limited, but marking great ingenuity. His manners were perfectly simple."

Around Naples he investigated the phenomena of volcanic eruptions. On his return to London they bought a house in Grosvenor Square. He now published several papers: "Experiments and Observations on the Colors used in Painting by the Ancients"; "Experiments on a Solid Compound of Iodine and Oxygen, and on its Chemical Agencies"; "Action of Acids on the Salts usually called the Hyper-oxymuriates, and on the Gases produced from them."

All his life, besides his ambition to be great, he desired to aid his fellow-men, and in the year 1815 he made a discovery which placed him among the benefactors of the race. In 1812 a terrible explosion of gas had taken place in a mine, causing the death of nearly a hundred men. The mine was on fire, and the mouth had to be closed, thus bringing sure death to the poor creatures within. Such accidents were so frequent, that a committee of mine proprietors visited the great chemist, to see if science could suggest a remedy.

He at once visited several mines, investigated fire-damp, and found it to be light carburetted hydrogen. After a long and careful series of experiments through several months, he invented the safety-lamp, "a cage of wire gauze, which actually made prisoner the flame of the fire-damp, and in its prison consumed it; and whilst it confined the dangerous explosive flame, it permitted air to pass and light to escape; and though, from the combustion of the fire-damp, the cage might become red hot, yet still it acted the part of a safety-lamp."

Sir Humphrey at thirty-seven had immortalized himself. At a public dinner given in his honor at Newcastle, a service of plate worth over twelve thousand dollars was presented to him. After his death this service was given to the Royal Society by his widow, to be sold, and the proceeds applied to the encouragement of science. Emperor Alexander of Russia sent him a splendid silver-gilt vase, with a personal letter; his own sovereign conferred a baronetcy upon him.

When Davy was urged by some friends to take out a patent upon the safety-lamp, and thus make five or ten thousand a year for himself, he said, "I never thought of such a thing: my sole object was to serve the cause of humanity; and if I have succeeded, I am amply rewarded in the gratifying reflection of having done so. I have enough for all my views and purposes; more wealth could not increase either my fame or my happiness. It might undoubtedly enable me to put four horses to my carriage; but what would it avail me to have it said that Sir Humphrey drives his carriage and four?"

He said later of his discovery of the safety-lamp: "I value it more than anything I ever did: it was the result of a great deal of investigation and labor; but if my directions be attended to, it will save the lives of thousands of poor men. I was never more affected than by a written address which I received from the working colliers when I was in the North, thanking me on behalf of themselves and their families for the preservation of their lives."

Sir Humphrey used to say: "Whoever wishes to enjoy peace, and is gifted with great talents, must labor for posterity. In doing this he enjoys all the pleasures of intellectual labor, and all the desire arising from protracted hope. He feels no envy nor jealousy; his mark is too far distant to be seen by short-sighted malevolence, and therefore it is never aimed at… To raise a chestnut on the mountain, or a palm in the plain, which may afford shade, shelter, and fruit for generations yet unborn, and which, if they have once fixed their roots, require no culture, is better than to raise annual flowers in a garden, which must be watered daily, and in which a cold wind may chill or too ardent a sunshine may dry… The best faculties of man are employed for futurity: speaking is better than acting, writing is better than speaking."

In the spring of 1818 he took his second continental journey with his wife, going through Austria, Germany, and Italy. Commissioned by his king, he made some researches on Herculaneum manuscripts.

On his return to England he was made President of the Royal Society, the position so ably filled by Sir Isaac Newton. Every Saturday evening, poets, artists, and men of science gathered at his receptions. This office he held for seven years, till his declining health compelled his resignation.

In December, 1821, Davy paid a visit to his old home in Penzance, and saw his mother for the last time before her death. A public dinner was given him by his townsmen, which honor he greatly appreciated. He was no longer the poor lad among them. "Every heart, tongue, and eye were as one to do honor to him who had not only rendered the name of their town famous and imperishable as science itself, but who had added lustre to the intellectual character of their country."

From year to year he continued his experiments. Urged by the commissioners of the navy to remedy the corrosion of copper sheathing on vessels by sea water, he succeeded in rendering the copper negatively electrical by small pieces of tin, zinc, or iron nails. Shells and seaweeds adhered to the non-corroded surface, but the principle of galvanic protection has been applied to various important uses.

In 1824, Sir Humphrey took a journey to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, visiting Berzelius of Sweden, "one of the great ornaments of the age," he said, and Oersted of Denmark, distinguished for his discovery of electro-magnetism.

Towards the close of 1826, when he was only forty-eight, Davy was attacked by paralysis in the right side, having suffered for a year with numbness and pain in his right arm. During his confinement in his room, he corrected the proof sheets of his "Discourses to the Royal Society," published in January, 1827.

In this year, having improved, he went through France, Italy, and Switzerland, hunting and fishing as in his boyhood, and writing "Salmonia, or Days of Fly Fishing," giving descriptions of his journey and his observations on natural history.

In the spring of 1828, he made another journey, to Southern Austria, spending the winter in Italy, and writing his "Consolation in Travel," which Cuvier called the work of a dying Plato. "I was desirous," he says, "of again passing some time in these scenes, in the hope of reëstablishing a broken constitution; and though this hope was a feeble one, yet, at least, I expected to spend a few of the last days of life more tranquilly and more agreeably than in the metropolis of my own country. Nature never deceives us. The rocks, the mountains, the streams, always speak the same language. A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring; a thunder storm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent: but these effects are rare and transient; in a few hours, or at least days, all the sources of beauty are renovated; and Nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution of humanity, – no hopes forever blighted in the bud, – no beings full of life, beauty, and promise, taken from us in the prime of youth. Her fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet; she affords none of those blighted ones so common in the life of man, and so like the fabled apples of the Dead Sea, – fresh and beautiful to the sight, but, when tasted, full of bitterness and ashes."

From Rome he writes to a friend, a year later, in the spring of 1829: "I am here wearing away the winter, – a ruin amongst ruins!.. I fight against sickness and fate, believing I have still duties to perform, and that even my illness is connected in some way with my being made useful to my fellow-creatures. I have this conviction full on my mind, that intellectual beings spring from the same breath of infinite intelligence, and return to it again, but by different courses. Like rivers born amidst the clouds of heaven, and lost in the deep and eternal ocean, – some in youth, rapid and short-lived torrents; some in manhood, powerful and copious rivers; and some in age, by a winding and slow course, half lost in their career, and making their exit by many sandy and shallow mouths."

Davy was destined to go back to the Infinite Intelligence in manhood, "a powerful and copious river," however much he "fought against sickness and fate."

On February 23, 1829, he dictated a letter to his brother John: "I am dying from a severe attack of palsy, which has seized the whole body, with the exception of the intellectual organ." He added in his own hand, just legible, "Come as quickly as possible."

When the brother arrived, and was overcome with grief, Sir Humphrey received him with a cheerful smile, and bade him not to grieve, but consider the event like a philosopher. He talked more earnestly than ever, and his mind seemed all aglow as with the brilliancy of a setting sun.

At one time he was so near death, that he said "he had gone through the whole process of dying, and that when he awoke he had difficulty in convincing himself that he was in his earthly existence." Reviving somewhat, they journeyed from Italy to Geneva, by slow and easy travel, arriving May 28, 1829. In the night, at half-past two, Sir Humphrey was taken very ill, and died almost immediately.

He was buried June 1, in the cemetery outside the walls of the city, having requested to be interred where he died, without any display. The grave is marked by a simple monument erected by his wife. She also founded a prize in his honor, to be given every two years, for the most original and important discovery in chemical science. Only fifty, and his work finished, – no not finished, – for his books and his discoveries, his character, with its earnest perseverance, its tenderness, its sympathy, its noble aspirations, and its helpfulness to mankind, will live forever!