His last important act at the Royal Institution, of which he remained honorary professor, was to interview the young Michael Faraday, later to become one of Englands great scientists, who became laboratory assistant there in 1813 and accompanied the Davys on a European tour (181315). [58] However, the copper bottoms were gradually corroded by exposure to the salt water. In the gas experiments Davy ran considerable risks. Although Davy's work on respiratory physiology and nitrous oxide anesthesia had little practical impact in his own time, he bequeathed to us a foundational legacy of scientific inquiry that endures to this day. [67], Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. "[8], These criticisms, however, led Davy to refine and improve his experimental techniques,[22] spending his later time at the institution increasingly in experimentation. Davy attacked the problem with characteristic enthusiasm, evincing an outstanding talent for experimental inquiry. Robert Davy died in 1794, saddling his widow with a large debt as a result of his mining adventures. He investigated the composition of the oxides and acids of nitrogen, as well as ammonia, and persuaded his scientific and literary friends, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and Peter Mark Roget, to report the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide. George Stephenson's lamp was very popular in the north-east coalfields, and used the same principle of preventing the flame reaching the general atmosphere, but by different means. It is not safe to experiment upon a globule larger than a pin's head. He therefore reasoned that electrolysis, the interactions of electric currents with chemical compounds, offered the most likely means of decomposing all substances to their elements. Davy refused to patent his invention, calling it his gift to humanity. Banks had groomed the engineer, author and politician Davies Gilbert to succeed him and preserve the status quo, but Gilbert declined to stand. A young Humphry Davy gleefully works the bellows in this caricature by James Gillray of experiments with laughing gas at the Royal Institution. For his research, Davy received numerous awards and honors, among them the Copley Award, the Royal Societys Royal Medal and election to the presidency of the Royal Society. Later, Davy determined that not all acids contain oxygen, including muriatic acid (our hydrochloric acid), which, as Davy discovered, was not oxymuriatic acid, as Lavoisier thought. France's leading scientific lights were on hand for Davy's visit, including Joseph Gay-Lussac (17781850) and Andre Marie Ampere (17751836); Ampere arranged a meeting with the chemist Bernard Courtois (17771838), who had in 1811 made a series of observations describing purple vapors rising from acidified kelp ashes. For example, he wrote the first text on the application of chemistry to agriculture and designed a miners lamp that surrounded the lamps flame with wire gauze to dissipate its heat and thus inhibit ignition of the methane gas commonly found in mines. Davy, like many of his enlightenment contemporaries, supported female education and women's involvement in scientific pursuits, even proposing that women be admitted to evening events at the Royal Society.
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