To prevent catastrophic accidents in coal mines by the explosion of fire-damp (methane) in the presence of a naked flame. This article describes the key experiments that he performed at the Royal Institution and some of the subsequent trials made in the coal mines of the north of England. It begins, however, with an account of Davy’s prior achievements in science before he was approached for help by the clergymen and doctors in the Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne areas. There is little doubt that the Davy lamp, from the 1820s onwards, transformed the coal industry worldwide. It also profoundly influenced the science of combustion, and in the words of a pioneer in that field, W. A. Bone, FRS, `There is no better model of logical experimental procedure, accurate reasoning, philosophical outlook and fine literary expression.’ It is a remarkable fact that itOne contribution of 17 to a theme issue `Celebrating 350 years of Philosophical Transactions: physical sciences papers’.Subject Areas: atmospheric chemistry Keywords: fire-damp, coal mines, safety lamp, science of combustion Author for correspondence: John Meurig Thomas e-mail: [email protected] featured article can be viewed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1816.0003.Electronic supplementary material is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2014.0288 or via http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org.2015 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.took Davy essentially only two weeks from the time he was given samples of fire-damp to solve the problem and to devise his renowned miner’s safety lamp. A brief account is also given of the contemporaneous invention of a safety lamp by George Stephenson, and of some of Davy’s subsequent accomplishments. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 373:…………………………………………………1. Sir Humphry Davy (1778?829)So much has been written about the life and work of Humphry Davy that it is hardly necessary to expatiate further on his extraordinary range of accomplishments. Detailed memoirs by Paris [1] and his brother, John Davy [2], are well LOXO-101 web known–and so are some of their faults. An admirable biography, by T. E. Thorpe, FRS, appeared in 1896 [3], and a concise and illuminating account of all aspects of his life and work is given in the monograph by Sir Harald Hartley, FRS [4]. Equally useful accounts of Davy’s life and work are also available [5?]. Richard Holmes’ admirable The age of wonder [8] details many of Davy’s interests and activities, and recent short accounts of Davy as a natural philosopher, discoverer, inventor, poet and man of action have been published by this author and his colleagues [9,10]. Davy was, arguably, the first-ever popularizer of chemical science: he combined felicity of literary and poetic expression with brilliant scientific discovery and buy LOXO-101 demonstration. The intellectuals, socialites and aristocrats of London flocked in droves in the early decades of the nineteenth century to his lectures at the Royal Institution (RI). Such was the congestion caused by the numerous carriages that entered Albemarle Street in the heart of Mayfair (less than a mile from Piccadilly Cir.To prevent catastrophic accidents in coal mines by the explosion of fire-damp (methane) in the presence of a naked flame. This article describes the key experiments that he performed at the Royal Institution and some of the subsequent trials made in the coal mines of the north of England. It begins, however, with an account of Davy’s prior achievements in science before he was approached for help by the clergymen and doctors in the Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne areas. There is little doubt that the Davy lamp, from the 1820s onwards, transformed the coal industry worldwide. It also profoundly influenced the science of combustion, and in the words of a pioneer in that field, W. A. Bone, FRS, `There is no better model of logical experimental procedure, accurate reasoning, philosophical outlook and fine literary expression.’ It is a remarkable fact that itOne contribution of 17 to a theme issue `Celebrating 350 years of Philosophical Transactions: physical sciences papers’.Subject Areas: atmospheric chemistry Keywords: fire-damp, coal mines, safety lamp, science of combustion Author for correspondence: John Meurig Thomas e-mail: [email protected] featured article can be viewed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1816.0003.Electronic supplementary material is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2014.0288 or via http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org.2015 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.took Davy essentially only two weeks from the time he was given samples of fire-damp to solve the problem and to devise his renowned miner’s safety lamp. A brief account is also given of the contemporaneous invention of a safety lamp by George Stephenson, and of some of Davy’s subsequent accomplishments. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 373:…………………………………………………1. Sir Humphry Davy (1778?829)So much has been written about the life and work of Humphry Davy that it is hardly necessary to expatiate further on his extraordinary range of accomplishments. Detailed memoirs by Paris [1] and his brother, John Davy [2], are well known–and so are some of their faults. An admirable biography, by T. E. Thorpe, FRS, appeared in 1896 [3], and a concise and illuminating account of all aspects of his life and work is given in the monograph by Sir Harald Hartley, FRS [4]. Equally useful accounts of Davy’s life and work are also available [5?]. Richard Holmes’ admirable The age of wonder [8] details many of Davy’s interests and activities, and recent short accounts of Davy as a natural philosopher, discoverer, inventor, poet and man of action have been published by this author and his colleagues [9,10]. Davy was, arguably, the first-ever popularizer of chemical science: he combined felicity of literary and poetic expression with brilliant scientific discovery and demonstration. The intellectuals, socialites and aristocrats of London flocked in droves in the early decades of the nineteenth century to his lectures at the Royal Institution (RI). Such was the congestion caused by the numerous carriages that entered Albemarle Street in the heart of Mayfair (less than a mile from Piccadilly Cir.
