Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher

A biographical account chronicles the scientist's upbringing, experiments, and public career, using memoirs, correspondence, and laboratory journals to reconstruct discoveries and lectures. The author weighs conflicting accounts in earlier biographies, favoring material from family papers while noting exaggerations and omissions elsewhere. The narrative examines claims and controversy surrounding a safety-lamp invention, relations with contemporaries and a famous assistant, and the subject's influence on learned societies, museum collections, and social institutions. Illustrative material and unpublished correspondence are used to illuminate private life, laboratory practice, and the practical as well as social dimensions of scientific work.