Humphry Davy: The Experimental Self

Time: 12:00pm

Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation

Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was a chemist, a philosopher, and a poet, in an age before the designation “professional scientist” existed. He invented his own identity in the course of a brilliant career in early-nineteenth-century England, making his reputation as a genius of science through his performances as a chemical lecturer and discoverer. Alongside his public identity, Davy also engaged in intense exploration of his private subjectivity through self-experimentation and literary work. My research focuses on how Davy fashioned himself, both as a social being and as an individual consciousness.

Jan Golinski is a professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he served until recently as Chair of the Department of History. He is the author of Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge, 1992), Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science (Chicago, 2005), and British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment (Chicago, 2007). During the fall of 2012, he is the Gordon Cain Distinguished Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation.