The Royal Institution: Its Founder and First Professors

by Bence Jones

In October Sir H. Davy went abroad with Mr. Faraday.

In May 1815 he came back, and Faraday was re-engaged as the assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution. Whilst abroad he had sent as many as seven papers to the Royal Society—on ‘Fluoric Acid Compounds and Hydrogen Acids.’ Two papers on ‘Iodine,’ on ‘Combustion of the Diamond,’ on ‘Ancient Colours,’ on a ‘Solid Compound of Iodine and Oxygen,’ on ‘Hyperoxy-Muriates.’

When he returned he probably intended to make greater discoveries in chemistry during the following ten years than he had made during the fifteen years that he had been at the Institution. He was in the prime of life. He had won the highest rank as an original inquirer. He had a love of research which, in spite of his marriage, his wealth, and ultimately his ill health, never ceased until his early death. He had Faraday as his assistant, and he soon found a subject more fruitful than the composition of nitrogen, which had so long baffled his genius.

Many of the details of his work in the laboratory until his last experiment on the diffusion of gases, in February 1826, are to be found in the ‘Life of Faraday.’ It will be sufficient to give here a statement of the original researches which he communicated to the Royal Society.

In November 1815 and January 1816 his papers on Fire-damp were read. He then worked upon flame, and in January 1817 his researches on flame and his splendid invention of the Davy Lamp were laid before the Royal Society. At this time the popular reputation of Davy reached its climax, and, looking back, we can now see that his life should have ended here; he was then only 38 years old. He was presented with a service of plate as a token of his invaluable invention by the coal owners of the Tyne and Wear. He bequeathed this to the Royal Society for the foundation of a medal, to be given yearly to the chemist who made the greatest discovery. This prize should be looked on as a lasting memorial of the countless lives which Davy and other chemists, by the application of their scientific researches, have preserved.

Year after year, from 1817 to 1826, Davy communicated new investigations to the Royal Society. He worked on chlorine, on phosphorus, on mists. He went abroad again, and he tried chemically to unfold the Herculanean papyri. He returned in 1820, and was elected President of the Royal Society after the death of Sir Joseph Banks. Then he worked on magnetic phenomena produced by electricity, on electric phenomena in vacuo, on water in the cavities of crystals, on new phenomena of electro-magnetism. He became jealous of the discoveries of Faraday, and he sent a paper to the Royal Society on the ‘Application of Liquids Formed by the Condensation of Gases as Mechanical Agents.’

In 1823 he began to work on the defence of the copper sheathing of ships, and in 1824 he had two papers published on this subject. He went in a Government steamboat to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark for the purpose of trying the influence of motion on his protectors. He had already suffered for a year at this time from ill health. In 1825 his paper on the ‘Preservation of Metals by Electrochemistry’ was published. In practice his plan failed, and he was too ill to bear lightly the disappointment of his expectations. In 1826 he had a paper read on the ‘Relations of Electrical and Chemical Changes.’ It contained but little new matter. On November 30 he was elected President of the Royal Society for the last time. He was dangerously ill on the day of election.

In the middle of December 1826 he was struck with paralysis of the right side.

With the restlessness of disease on January 22, about a month after his attack, he set out for Italy. He had the worst possible journey across Mont Cenis, and, after being three weeks at Ravenna, in the middle of March he wrote to Mr. Poole:

I am, thank God, better, but still very weak and wholly unfit for any kind of business and study. I have, however, considerably recovered the use of all the limbs that were affected, and, as my amendment has been slow and gradual, I hope in time it may be complete. But I am leading the life of an anchorite, obliged to abstain from flesh, wine, business, study, experiments, and all things that I love; but this discipline is salutary, and, for the sake of being able to do something more for science, and I hope for humanity, I submit to it, believing that the Great Source of intellectual being so wills it for good.