Davy Notebooks Project

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was one of the most significant and famous figures in the scientific and literary culture of early nineteenth-century Britain, Europe, and America. Davy’s scientific accomplishments include: conducting pioneering research into the physiological effects of nitrous oxide (often called ‘laughing gas’); isolating seven chemical elements (magnesium, calcium, potassium, sodium, strontium, barium, and boron) and establishing the elemental status of chlorine and iodine; inventing a miners’ safety lamp; developing the electrochemical protection of the copper sheeting of Royal Navy vessels; conserving the Herculaneum papyri; and writing an influential text on agricultural chemistry. Davy was also a poet, moving in the same literary circles as Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth. To date, only a very small proportion of Davy’s manuscript notebooks have been transcribed and published. What makes Davy’s notebooks especially fascinating is that they are generically mixed, containing records of his thoughts, scientific experiments, poetry, geological observations, travel accounts, and personal philosophy. By joining the Davy Notebooks Project, you can help researchers at Lancaster University and the Royal Institution of Great Britain to transcribe and digitally preserve seventy-five of Davy’s notebooks, used throughout his lifetime. Together, we will learn more about Davy, his work, and the relationship between poetry and science.