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Sir Humphry Davy, Bt by Thomas Phillips. British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and valentines gifts for him long distance relationship very early form of arc lamp.

In 1799 he experimented with nitrous oxide and was astonished at how it made him laugh, so he nicknamed it “laughing gas” and wrote about its potential anaesthetic properties in relieving pain during surgery. Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall, in the Kingdom of Great Britain on 17 December 1778, the eldest of the five children of Robert Davy, a woodcarver, and his wife Grace Millett. At the age of six, Davy was sent to the grammar school at Penzance. Three years later, his family moved to Varfell, near Ludgvan, and subsequently, in term-time Davy boarded with John Tonkin, his godfather and later his guardian. After Davy’s father died in 1794, Tonkin apprenticed him to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a practice in Penzance.

While becoming a chemist in the apothecary’s dispensary, he began conducting his earliest experiments at home, much to the annoyance of his friends and family. In 1797, after he learned French from a refuge priest, Davy read Lavoisier’s Traité élémentaire de chimie. This exposure influenced much of his future work, which can be seen as reaction against Lavoisier’s work and the dominance of French chemists. As a poet, over one hundred and sixty manuscript poems were written by Davy, the majority of which are found in his personal notebooks. Most of his written poems were not published, and he chose instead to share a few of them with his friends.

Eight of his known poems were published. His poems reflected his views on both his career and also his perception of certain aspects of human life. John Ayrton Paris remarked that poems written by the young Davy “bear the stamp of lofty genius”. Davy’s first preserved poem entitled The Sons of Genius is dated 1795 and marked by the usual immaturity of youth. Three of Davy’s paintings from around 1796 have been donated to the Penlee House museum at Penzance. At 17, he discussed the question of the materiality of heat with his Quaker friend and mentor Robert Dunkin. Dunkin remarked: ‘I tell thee what, Humphry, thou art the most quibbling hand at a dispute I ever met with in my life.