What Humphry Davy’s notebooks reveal about his life and work
Excerpts show different sides of chemist’s character
The Davy Notebooks Project has been digitising and transcribing 83 volumes of diaries written by the influential 19th-century chemist Humphry Davy. Over five years, thousands of volunteers have worked to make Davy’s thoughts and findings available to the public. The diaries paint a complex picture of one of chemistry’s leading figures: from his scientific discoveries to his interests in the arts, his experiments with nitrous oxide, his views on his contemporaries and his thoughts on race.
These excerpts of pages from his diaries show some of the different aspects of his life, his work and his character.