Humphry Davy (1778–1829) was the most famous chemist and geologist of his day, best known as inventor of the miners’ safety lamp which bore his name. He was friends with William Wordsworth, visiting Dove Cottage twice; in 1805, the two men (along with Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott) climbed Helvellyn, England’s third highest mountain.
From age 16 to his last years, Davy filled many notebooks, writing more than 10,000 pages in total. Today, 83 notebooks survive, some of which you can see in this exhibition. This important collection is primarily held at the Royal Institution. The notebooks are filled with details of scientific experiments, ideas, personal reflections and hundreds of poems. These contents were largely undiscovered until 2019, when the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded ‘The Davy Notebooks Project’ team a £1 million grant to transcribe all of Davy’s surviving notebooks. As of August 2023, more than 90% of the notebooks have been transcribed thanks to the efforts of over 3,000 volunteers.
New for 2024
This exhibition, created by ‘The Davy Notebooks Project’, includes several of Davy’s notebooks, highlighting these new findings that reveal much about the man, his poetry and his attitudes. It also includes a prototype of the Davy lamp, credited with reducing the number of mining fatalities from ‘fire damp’ after its invention in 1815.
For more information about the project, visit:
