This book is a biographical study of the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829). It considers Davy’s career as a process of experimental self-fashioning, in which his adaptation to the prevailing social circumstances was accompanied by literary and scientific inquiry into his own subjectivity. Davy’s early life led from experiments on breathing gases (including nitrous oxide) to fame as a public scientific lecturer at the Royal Institution in London. He gained renown as the discoverer of several chemical elements, applied his knowledge to such practical problems as the design of a safety ... More

This book is a biographical study of the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829). It considers Davy’s career as a process of experimental self-fashioning, in which his adaptation to the prevailing social circumstances was accompanied by literary and scientific inquiry into his own subjectivity. Davy’s early life led from experiments on breathing gases (including nitrous oxide) to fame as a public scientific lecturer at the Royal Institution in London. He gained renown as the discoverer of several chemical elements, applied his knowledge to such practical problems as the design of a safety lamp for miners, and rose to prominence in the London scientific and social world. As he made his way in Regency society, Davy molded and adopted a series of personae or public characters. Six of these personae are discussed in the book, each one forming the focus of one chapter. Readers will follow Davy’s course from his youthful enthusiasm for physiological experimentation to his late-life manifestation as a melancholic traveler on the European continent. Along the way, they will gain an appreciation for the creativity Davy invested in his self-fashioning as a man of science, and the obstacles he overcame, in a period when the path to a scientific career was not as well-trodden as it is today.