John Davy FRS

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

(24 May 1790 – 24 January 1868) was a Cornish doctor, amateur chemist, brother of the noted chemist Sir Humphry Davy, and cousin of

Edmund Davy Edmund Davy Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (1785 – 5 November 1857)Christopher F. Lindsey, 'Davy, Edmund (1785–1857)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200 accessed 6 April 2008/ref> was a professor of chemi ...

. During his career, Davy discovered

phosgene Phosgene is an organic chemical compound with the formula . It is a toxic, colorless gas; in low concentrations, its musty odor resembles that of freshly cut hay or grass. It can be thought of chemically as the double acyl chloride analog of ...

silicon tetrafluoride Silicon tetrafluoride or tetrafluorosilane is a chemical compound with the formula Si F4. This colorless gas is notable for having a narrow liquid range: its boiling point is only 4 °C above its melting point. It was first prepared in 1771 ...

, and concluded that

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between ...

was an element.

Life

John Davy was born in

Penzance Penzance ( ; ) is a town, civil parish and port in the Penwith district of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is the westernmost major town in Cornwall and is about west-southwest of Plymouth and west-southwest of London. Situated in the ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

, on 24 May 1790, the son of Robert Davy and his wife, Grace Millet. He assisted his older brother Humphry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain for two years before heading to

Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the town council under the authority of a royal charter from King James VI in 1582 and offi ...

, where he earned his degree in medicine in 1814. In 1812, Davy discovered

, a compound he also named. At the same time, he concluded that chlorine was an element. He also discovered

. Upon qualification as a doctor in 1815, Davy joined the British Army Medical Department as an Army Hospital Assistant. From 1816 until 1820 he worked as Staff Surgeon in the General Hospital in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

. After being posted to a number of British colonies, including India and

Ceylon Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

, he was elevated to the rank of Inspector General of Army Hospitals in the

West Indies The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...

in 1862, based around

Barbados Barbados, officially the Republic of Barbados, is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies and the easternmost island of the Caribbean region. It lies on the boundary of the South American ...

. In 1834 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

. From 1836 to 1840 he produced nine volumes on the collected works of his brother. In 1842 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

, his proposer being Thomas Charles Hope. In 1863 he discovered that eggshells have about 8,000 pores that are large enough for oxygen to flow in and carbon dioxide to flow out by pumping pressurized air into an underwater egg and watching thousands of tiny bubbles appear on the surface of the shell. Davy returned to England, and moved to the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as ''the Lakes'' or ''Lakeland'', is a mountainous region and National parks of the United Kingdom, national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and mou ...

where he died at Lasketh-How near

Ambleside Ambleside is a town in the civil parish of Lakes and the Westmorland and Furness district of Cumbria, England. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Westmorland and located in the Lake District National Park, the town sits at the ...

on 24 January 1868.

Selected writings

* * * - published in nine volumes * For ''

Rees's Cyclopædia Rees's ''Cyclopædia'', in full ''The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature'', was an important 19th-century British people, British encyclopaedia edited by Rev. Abraham Rees (1743–1825), a Presbyterian minis ...

'' he contributed articles about Chemistry, but the topics are not known.

References

External links

Davy's account of his discovery of phosgene
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davy, John 1790 births 1868 deaths Amateur chemists People from Penzance Scientists from Cornwall English chemists Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of the University of Edinburgh John Royal Army Medical Corps officers