Humphry Davy’s Consolations in Travel: Last Thoughts of a Chemical Philosopher

Time: 5:00pm

Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation

Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829) was the foremost chemist of his day and one of the most distinguished British men of science of the 19th century. He was the first to isolate the elements sodium, potassium, barium, strontium, calcium, boron, and magnesium—the largest number credited to any individual discoverer. He achieved fame as a popular lecturer at the Royal Institution in London in the first decade of the 19th century, and he may well have been the inspiration for the portrait of Victor Frankenstein’s teacher in Mary Shelley’s novel of 1818. His other contributions to science include inventing the miners’ safety lamp and writing an influential text on agricultural chemistry.

Davy’s last book, Consolations in Travel, published posthumously in 1830, presented an enigma to its readers and has subsequently been regarded as something of an embarrassment. Written and dictated during the author’s final illness and travels, the book includes fragments of autobiography, narratives of dreams, philosophical dialogues concerning religion and immortality, visions of spectral beings and travel to other planets, and disquisitions on chemistry and geology. When the book is read sympathetically, and placed in the context of Davy's whole career, we can interpret it as both a deeply personal work and a sweeping philosophical vision. Davy proposes that chemistry is the key that unlocks the geologicalpast and the indefinite future. It is a “sublime” science of cosmic significance, which gives assurance of both human progress and personal immortality. It is this vision of a comprehensive philosophy based on chemistry that is Davy’s legacy in his strange final work.

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.

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