1-158-124 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

Humphry Davy, English chemist in 1803, (c1870). At this time Davy (1778-1829) was lecturer at the Royal Institution, London. From 1797 to 1801 he was assistant to Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808) at the Medical Pneumatic Institution where he experimented with nitrous oxide (Laughing Gas). Using electrolysis, Davy isolated the metals barium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium and strontium, as well as proving that chlorine was a chemical element. He is probably best known for his invention in 1815 of the miners' safety lamp, which enabled deeper, more gaseous seams to be mined without risk of explosion. After a portrait by Henry Howard (1769-1847) from The World's Great Men. (London, c1870).