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Hero System

The Hero System is a generic role-playing game system that was developed from the superhero RPG Champions. After Champions fourth edition was released in 1989, a stripped-down version of its ruleset with no superhero or other genre elements was released as The Hero System Rulesbook in 1990. As a spinoff of Champions, the Hero System is considered to have started with 4th edition (as it is mechanically identical to Champions 4th edition), rather than on its own with a 1st edition. However, the first three editions of the game are typically referred to as Champions, rather than the Hero System, as the game for its first three editions was not sold as a universal toolkit, instead largely focusing on superheroes.

The Hero System is used as the underlying mechanics of other Hero Games role-playing games such as Fantasy Hero, Star Hero, and Pulp Hero. It is characterized by point-based character creation and the rigor with which it measures character abilities. It uses only six-sided dice.

System features
The Hero System uses Champions ' key system features. Tasks are resolved using three six-sided dice and power effects (especially damage) are resolved by rolling a number of dice based on the power's strength.

Like Champions, it uses a tool-kit approach to creating effects. While the system does have more typical features of many RPGs, such as a skill system, most abilities in the Hero System rules are listed as generic "powers". Most powers are meant to be able to model a vast number of potential effects. When creating a character, a player decides on what effect they wish to create, then constructs this effect by consulting the powers in the rulebook. Most powers have a set of modifiers that alter their base performance to more finely-tune their representation of the effect desired. Each such modifier makes the power more or less capable, and correspondingly more or less expensive to purchase with character points (the "currency" used to buy powers; see the section following). The result is that many effects are possible from exactly the same base power. For example, while systems such as Dungeons & Dragons would list a wide variety of separate ranged attack powers that deal damage (such as a fireball, a lightning bolt, an acid spray, a magic missile, and dozens more), the vast majority of such effects in the Hero System would be constructed out of the same base two powers, "Blast" or "Killing Attack".

The Hero System rules only define an ability's very basic mechanical effects—the player is the one who defines what the ability looks like when used. For example, if a player wishes to model the ability to project a jet of fire, they could choose the "Blast" power. However, the power's text has no mention of what it looks like or how it operates beyond some very base notes concerning damage and range. To make it a jet of fire, the player simply states that this Blast is a jet of fire. To some degree this is simply cosmetic. However, in the game, that power now is treated as a fire attack, with all that implies as decided by the gamemaster in each situation: it has the possibility of starting secondary fires; it looks, smells and sounds like a jet of fire; will not work in water; will terrify people with a phobia of fire; etc. The system does have mechanical effect alterations as well: a Blast could be altered by any number of power modifiers such as "Explosion", "Area of Effect", "Megascale", etc.: both advantages and disadvantages are available. As players are typically attempting to model something with at least a partial real-life analogue, limitations on a power are as much about making it more accurate a representation as they are making it less expensive to purchase (for example, to model a firearm, the limitation that it requires ammunition is expected, regardless of the fact that this happens to make a firearm cost fewer character points). The system also allows players to construct very exacting modifiers not specifically detailed in the base rules. For example, a player could define one or more powers as not working when the moon is full, or when it is Tuesday, or any other limitation that the player can imagine and the gamemaster feels is applicable.

Also like Champions, the Hero System uses a point-based system for character creation. Instead of templates which define what a character is, how it performs mechanically, and the new abilities gained after a certain amount of play, a player is given a fixed number of points and allowed to create what they want. As this is a much more freeform process than in most games, the system encourages close involvement between players and gamemasters to ensure that all participants have the same understanding regarding the type of effects permitted, relative power levels, and the like.

Character creation
Each player creates their character starting with a pool of points to buy abilities (such as "Energy Blast" and "Armor"), increase characteristics (such as "Strength" and "Intelligence") and buy skills (such as "Computer Programming" and "Combat Driving"). This pool can be increased by taking disadvantages for your character (such as being hunted by an enemy, a dependency of some sort or having people who depend on your character in some way). The initial pool, as well as the final pool size, is determined by the Game Master (GM), as well as the point limits on each individual ability.

"'You build Hero System characters with Character Points. You purchase everything a character can do — from his ability to lift heavy objects, to his skill with weapons, to his ability to use magic or superpowers — with Character Points. Your GM will tell you how many points you have to build your character with — the more points, the more powerful the character, generally. You can spend most of your Character Points without any requirements, but you only get to spend some of them if you take a matching value of Complications for your character. Complications are disadvantages, hindrances, and difficulties that affect a character and thus help you to define who he is and properly simulate the concept you have in mind for him. For example, your character might be Hunted by an old enemy, or adhere to a Code Of Honor, or be missing one eye. [. . .] There are five things a character can buy with Character Points: Characteristics, Skills, Perks, Talents, and Powers.' - excerpt from Hero System Sixth Edition Volume 1"

Unlike the d20 System and many other game systems, experience awards are in the form of character points, which have the same value as those used in character creation and can be applied directly to the character's abilities upon receipt.

Powers
The powers system are the variables players can manipulate in the characters of Hero System. The powers in the Hero System are categorized roughly as follows:

 * Adjustment Powers — Modify the Characteristics of self or another.
 * Attack Powers — Inflict physical damage or some other negative effect on an opponent.
 * Body-Affecting Powers — Change shape, size, density, etc.
 * Defense Powers — Protect against an attack or mishap.
 * Mental Powers — Detect and/or affect the mind of another.
 * Movement Powers — Employ various forms of movement.
 * Sense-Affecting Powers — Alter or hinder a character's senses.
 * Sensory Powers — Improve or expand upon the sensory abilities.
 * Size Powers — Growth and Shrinking.
 * Special Powers — Powers with some unusual quality, including ones that do not fall into the other categories.
 * Standard Powers — A "catch-all" for Powers that are not Adjustment, Mental, Movement, Size, or Special Powers.

Within each of these categories are multiple Powers that have more specialized effects. Thus for the movement category there are powers that can be used for Running, Swimming, Climbing, Leaping, Gliding, Flying, Tunneling through solid surfaces, and even Teleportation. For certain game genres there are even powers for traveling to other dimensions or moving faster than light.

Also, many Powers appear in at least two categories. For example, most Attack Powers are also Standard Powers, and Size Powers are basically just a subcategory of Body-Affecting Powers. Darkness is in three categories — Standard, Attack, and Sense-Affecting.

Point Cost
Each power has a base point cost for a given effect. This could be, for example, a certain number of points per six-sided-die (or "d6") of damage inflicted upon a foe.

Powers can have both advantages and limitations. Both are modifiers applied at different stages in calculating cost. These modifiers are typically changes of ±$1/4$, but can range up to ±2 or even higher.

After the base cost is calculated, advantages are applied. These, which can make a power more useful, typically expand its effectiveness or make it more powerful, and thus make it more expensive. Once advantages are applied, the base cost becomes the Active Cost.

The Active Cost is calculated as an intermediate step as it is required to calculate certain figures, such as range, END usage, difficulty of activation rolls, and other things.

The formula for calculating the Active Cost is:
 * Active Cost = Base Cost × (1 + Advantages)

Once Active Cost is calculated, limitations are applied. These represent shortcomings in the power, lessened reliability or situations in which the power can not be used. Limitations are added separately as positive numbers, even though they are listed as negative.

The Real Cost of the power is then determined by:
 * Real Cost = Active Cost / (1 + Limitations)

The Real Cost is the amount the character must actually pay for the Power.

Power Frameworks
The rules also include schemes for providing a larger number of powers to a character for a given cost. These power frameworks reduce the cost either by requiring the group of powers to have a common theme as in an Elemental Control Framework, or by limiting the number of powers that can be active at one time with a Multipower Framework. Powers within a framework can share common limitations, further reducing the cost. A third type of power framework, the Variable Power Pool (VPP), trades thrift for flexibility. With it, powers can be arbitrarily chosen on the fly, granting enhanced in-game flexibility. The price is a premium on points, called the Control Cost. Additionally, it is marked as potentially unbalancing, so not all GMs will permit VPP's.

Elemental Controls were eliminated in the Sixth Edition.

Publishing history
Although several games based on what would become known as the Hero System were published in the 1980s, including Champions, Danger International, Justice, Inc., Robot Warriors and the original versions of Fantasy Hero and Star Hero, each of the RPGs was self-contained, much as Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing games are. The Hero System itself was not released as an independent entity until 1990, as Steve Jackson Games' GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System) became more popular. As a joint venture between Hero Games and Iron Crown Enterprises, a stand-alone Hero System Rulebook was published alongside the fourth edition of Champions. The content was identical to the opening sections of the Champions rules, but all genre-related material was removed. Afterward, genre books such as Ninja Hero (written by Aaron Allston) and Fantasy Hero were published as sourcebooks for the Hero System Rulebook as opposed to being independent games.

With the collapse of the Hero-ICE alliance, the Hero System went into limbo for several years. The Champions franchise released a new version under the Fuzion system, which had been a joint development with R. Talsorian Games, called Champions: the New Millennium. Although two editions were published, it was very poorly received by Champions fans. In 2001, a reconstituted Hero Games was formed under the leadership of Steven S. Long, who had written several books for the earlier version of the system. It regained the rights to the Hero System and to the Champions trademark.

In 2001, the Fifth Edition of the Hero System Rulebook was released, incorporating heavy revisions by Long. A large black hardcover, it was critically well received and attained a degree of commercial success. (Following problems with fragile bindings on Fourth Edition rulebooks, the planned binding for the larger Fifth Edition was tested using a clothes dryer. ) The Fifth Edition is often referred to as "FREd", which is a backronym for "Fifth Rules Edition". The name actually comes from Steve S. Long's reply when asked what the standard abbreviation for the Fifth Edition would be: "I don't care if you call it 'Fred', as long as you buy it." This was made the unofficial nickname by several replies on the same board affirming it after a reply from Willpower, who coined the backronym by saying, "OK. FREd it is, "Fifth Rules Edition"!"

A revised version (ISBN 1-58366-043-7) was issued in 2004, along with Hero System Sidekick, a condensed version of the rulebook with a cover price of under $10. Fans often call the revised Fifth Edition "Fiver," ReFREd," or "5ER" (from "Fifth Edition revised"; "Fiver" also alludes to Watership Down). This rulebook is so big (592 pages) that some fans speculated that it might be bulletproof, and it did indeed stop some bullets when tested by Hero Games staffers.

On February 28, 2008, Cryptic Studios purchased the Champions intellectual property, and sold the rights back to Hero Games to publish the 6th edition books. One of the new features will be to allow players to adapt their Champions Online characters to the pen-and-paper game.

In late 2009, Hero Games released the 6th Edition of the Hero System. The game has so far had a mostly positive reception, with little in the way of 'Edition Wars'. The largest rules change was the removal of Figured Characteristics (meaning that character stats that were previously linked intrinsically—such as Speed automatically increasing when sufficient amounts of Dexterity were purchased—were no longer connected, and instead bought entirely separately). Other, more minor rules changes include folding Armor and Force field into Resistant Defense and reestablishing Regeneration as a separate power. The rules were released in two volumes, with the first covering character creation in depth and the second describing campaigns and the running of games. The new genre book for Champions came out shortly thereafter, and a new Fantasy Hero was released in the summer of 2010. A new version of Sidekick was released in late 2009 under the title The Hero System Basic Rulebook, while an Advanced Player Guide was published that had additional options for character creation. Other recent releases included a large book of pre-constructed Powers, a set of pre-generated Martial Arts styles, abilities and skills, a large bestiary, a new grimoire for Fantasy Hero and a three-volume set of villains for Champions. A new edition of Star Hero was released in 2011, along with a second Advanced Player Guide.

On 28 November 2011, Hero Games announced a restructuring, with Darren Watts and long-time developer Steven S. Long relinquishing their full-time statuses to work freelance. In late 2012 Champions Complete was released, which contained all of the core 6th edition rules as well as enough information to play a superhero campaign in a single 240-page book. This compact presentation reflected criticism that the 6th edition rules had become too unwieldy.

Hero Games now maintains an irregular release schedule, with a minimal staff, and has successfully used Kickstarter to raise funds for new projects. One of these new products, Fantasy Hero Complete, was released in early 2015.

Computer Release
Heromaker, an MS-DOS program, was distributed with some versions of Champions. Today, Hero Designer for the Fifth and Sixth Editions is available on several platforms, and is supported by numerous character packs and other extensions linked to Hero Games book releases. In late 2008, Hero released a licensed RPG for Aaron Williams's popular comic PS238 using a simplified version of the Fifth Edition rules.

Reviews

 * Pyramid - Fifth Edition

title: Hero System


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Humphry Davy

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. Davy is also credited with discovering clathrate hydrates.

In 1799, he experimented with nitrous oxide and was astonished at how it made him laugh. He nicknamed it "laughing gas" and wrote about its potential as an anaesthetic to relieve pain during surgery.

Davy was a baronet, President of the Royal Society (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), Fellow of the Geological Society (FGS), and a member of the American Philosophical Society (elected 1810). Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."

Education, apprenticeship and poetry
Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall, in the Kingdom of Great Britain on 17 December 1778, the eldest of the five children of Robert Davy, a woodcarver, and his wife Grace Millett. According to his brother and fellow chemist John Davy, their hometown was characterised by "an almost unbounded credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous ... Amongst the middle and higher classes, there was little taste for literature, and still less for science ... Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cockfighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in."

Education
At the age of six, Davy was sent to the grammar school at Penzance. Three years later, his family moved to Varfell, near Ludgvan, and subsequently, in term-time, Davy boarded with John Tonkin, his godfather and later his guardian. Upon Davy's leaving grammar school in 1793, Tonkin paid for him to attend Truro Grammar School to finish his education under the Rev Dr Cardew, who, in a letter to the engineer and Fellow of the Royal Society Davies Giddy (from 1817 called Davies Gilbert), said dryly, "I could not discern the faculties by which he was afterwards so much distinguished." Davy entertained his school friends by writing poetry, composing Valentines, and telling stories from One Thousand and One Nights. Reflecting on his school days in a letter to his mother, Davy wrote, "Learning naturally is a true pleasure; how unfortunate then it is that in most schools it is made a pain." "I consider it fortunate", he continued, "I was left much to myself as a child, and put upon no particular plan of study ... What I am I made myself." His brother said Davy possessed a "native vigour" and "the genuine quality of genius, or of that power of intellect which exalts its possessor above the crowd."

Apothecary's apprentice
After Davy's father died in 1794, Tonkin apprenticed him to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a practice in Penzance. While becoming a chemist in the apothecary's dispensary, he began conducting his earliest experiments at home, much to the annoyance of his friends and family. His older sister, for instance, complained his corrosive substances were destroying her dresses, and at least one friend thought it likely the "incorrigible" Davy would eventually "blow us all into the air."

In 1797, after he learnt French from a refugee priest, Davy read Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie. This exposure influenced much of his future work, which can be seen as reaction against Lavoisier's work and the dominance of French chemists.

Poetry
As a poet, over one hundred and sixty manuscript poems were written by Davy, the majority of which are found in his personal notebooks. Most of his written poems were not published, and he chose instead to share a few of them with his friends. Eight of his known poems were published. His poems reflected his views on both his career and also his perception of certain aspects of human life. He wrote on human endeavours and aspects of life like death, metaphysics, geology, natural theology and chemistry.

John Ayrton Paris remarked that poems written by the young Davy "bear the stamp of lofty genius". Davy's first preserved poem entitled "The Sons of Genius" is dated 1795 and marked by the usual immaturity of youth. Other poems written in the following years, especially "On the Mount's Bay" and "St Michael's Mount", are descriptive verses.

Although he initially started writing his poems, albeit haphazardly, as a reflection of his views on his career and on life generally, most of his final poems concentrated on immortality and death. This was after he started experiencing failing health and a decline both in health and career.

Painting
Three of Davy's paintings from around 1796 have been donated to the Penlee House museum at Penzance. One is of the view from above Gulval showing the church, Mount's Bay and the Mount, while the other two depict Loch Lomond in Scotland.

Materiality of heat
At 17, he discussed the question of the materiality of heat with his Quaker friend and mentor Robert Dunkin. Dunkin remarked: 'I tell thee what, Humphry, thou art the most quibbling hand at a dispute I ever met with in my life.' One winter day he took Davy to the Lariggan River to show him that rubbing two plates of ice together developed sufficient energy by motion to melt them, and that after the motion was suspended, the pieces were united by regelation. It was a crude form of analogous experiment exhibited by Davy in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution that elicited considerable attention. As professor at the Royal Institution, Davy repeated many of the ingenious experiments he learnt from Dunkin.

Davy's gift for chemistry is recognised
Davies Giddy met Davy in Penzance carelessly swinging on the half-gate of Dr Borlase's house, and interested by his talk invited him to his house at Tredrea and offered him the use of his library. This led to his introduction to Dr Edwards, who lived at Hayle Copper House. Edwards was a lecturer in chemistry in the school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He permitted Davy to use his laboratory and possibly directed his attention to the floodgates of the port of Hayle, which were rapidly decaying as a result of the contact between copper and iron under the influence of seawater. Galvanic corrosion was not understood at that time, but the phenomenon prepared Davy's mind for subsequent experiments on ships' copper sheathing. Gregory Watt, son of James Watt, visited Penzance for his health's sake, and while lodging at the Davys' house became a friend and gave him instructions in chemistry. Davy was acquainted with the Wedgwood family, who spent a winter at Penzance.

Thomas Beddoes
At this time, physician and scientific writer Thomas Beddoes and geologist John Hailstone were engaged in a geological controversy on the rival merits of the Plutonian and Neptunist hypotheses. They travelled together to examine the Cornish coast accompanied by Giddy—an intimate friend of Beddoes—and made Davy's acquaintance. Beddoes, who had established at Bristol the medical research facility the 'Pneumatic Institution,' needed an assistant to superintend the laboratory. Giddy recommended Davy, and in 1798 Gregory Watt showed Beddoes Davy's Young man's Researches on Heat and Light, which were subsequently published by him in the first volume of West-Country Contributions. After prolonged negotiations, mainly by Giddy, Mrs Davy and Borlase consented to Davy's departure, but Tonkin wished him to remain in his native town as a surgeon, and altered his will when he found that Davy insisted on going to Dr Beddoes.

Pneumatic Institution
On 2 October 1798, Davy joined the Pneumatic Institution at Bristol. It had been established to investigate the medical powers of factitious airs and gases (gases produced experimentally or artificially), and Davy was to superintend the various experiments. The arrangement agreed between Dr Beddoes and Davy was generous, and enabled Davy to give up all claims on his paternal property in favour of his mother. He did not intend to abandon the medical profession and was determined to study and graduate at Edinburgh, but he soon began to fill parts of the institution with voltaic batteries. While living in Bristol, Davy met the Earl of Durham, who was a resident in the institution for his health.

Anna Beddoes
Davy threw himself energetically into the work of the laboratory and formed a long romantic friendship with Mrs Anna Beddoes, the novelist Maria Edgeworth's sister, who acted as his guide on walks and other fine sights of the locality. The critic Maurice Hindle was the first to reveal that Davy and Anna had written poems for each other. Wahida Amin has transcribed and discussed a number of poems written between 1803 and 1808 to "Anna" and one to her infant child.

Non-existence of caloric
In 1799, the first volume of the West-Country Collections was issued. Half consisted of Davy's essays On Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light, On Phos-oxygen and its Combinations, and on the Theory of Respiration. On 22 February 1799 Davy, wrote to Davies Giddy, "I am now as much convinced of the non-existence of caloric as I am of the existence of light."

Nitrous oxide
In 1799, Davy became increasingly well known due to his experiments with the physiological action of some gases, including laughing gas (nitrous oxide). The gas was first synthesised in 1772 by the natural philosopher and chemist Joseph Priestley, who called it dephlogisticated nitrous air (see phlogiston). Priestley described his discovery in the book Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1775), in which he described how to produce the preparation of "nitrous air diminished", by heating iron filings dampened with nitric acid. In another letter to Giddy, on 10 April, Davy informs him: "I made a discovery yesterday which proves how necessary it is to repeat experiments. The gaseous oxide of azote (the laughing gas) is perfectly respirable when pure. It is never deleterious but when it contains nitrous gas. I have found a mode of making it pure." He said that he breathed sixteen quarts of it for nearly seven minutes, and that it "absolutely intoxicated me."

In addition to Davy himself, his enthusiastic experimental subjects included his poet friends Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as Gregory Watt and James Watt, other close friends. James Watt built a portable gas chamber to facilitate Davy's experiments with the inhalation of nitrous oxide. At one point the gas was combined with wine to judge its efficacy as a cure for hangover (his laboratory notebook indicated success). The gas was popular among Davy's friends and acquaintances, and he noted that it might be useful for performing surgical operations. Anesthetics were not regularly used in medicine or dentistry until decades after Davy's death.

Carbon monoxide
In the gas experiments Davy ran considerable risks. His respiration of nitric oxide which may have combined with air in the mouth to form nitric acid (HNO3), severely injured the mucous membrane, and in Davy's attempt to inhale four quarts of "pure hydrocarbonate" gas in an experiment with carbon monoxide he "seemed sinking into annihilation." On being removed into the open air, Davy faintly articulated, "I do not think I shall die," but some hours elapsed before the painful symptoms ceased. Davy was able to take his own pulse as he staggered out of the laboratory and into the garden, and he described it in his notes as "threadlike and beating with excessive quickness".

Early publications
During 1799, Beddoes and Davy published Contributions to physical and medical knowledge, principally from the west of England and ''Essays on heat, light, and the combinations of light, with a new theory of respiration. On the generation of oxygen gas, and the causes of the colors of organic beings.'' Their experimental work was poor, and the publications were harshly criticised. In after years Davy regretted he had ever published these immature hypotheses, which he subsequently designated "the dreams of misemployed genius which the light of experiment and observation has never conducted to truth." These criticisms, however, led Davy to refine and improve his experimental techniques, spending his later time at the institution increasingly in experimentation.

In December 1799 Davy visited London for the first time and extended his circle of friends. Davy features in the diary of William Godwin, with their first meeting recorded for 4 December 1799.

In 1800, Davy informed Giddy that he had been "repeating the galvanic experiments with success" in the intervals of the experiments on the gases, which "almost incessantly occupied him from January to April." In 1800, Davy published his Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration, and received a more positive response.

Proofreading Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge moved to the Lake District in 1800, and asked Davy to deal with the Bristol publishers of the Lyrical Ballads, Biggs & Cottle. Coleridge asked Davy to proofread the second edition, the first to contain Wordsworth's "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads", in a letter dated 16 July 1800: "Will you be so kind as just to look over the sheets of the lyrical Ballads". Wordsworth subsequently wrote to Davy on 29 July 1800, sending him the first manuscript sheet of poems and asking him specifically to correct: "any thing you find amiss in the punctuation a business at which I am ashamed to say I am no adept". Wordsworth was ill in the autumn of 1800 and slow in sending poems for the second edition; the volume appeared on 26 January 1801 even though it was dated 1800. While it is impossible to know whether Davy was at fault, this edition of the Lyrical Ballads contained many errors, including the poem "Michael" being left incomplete. In a personal notebook marked on the front cover "Clifton 1800 From August to Novr", Davy wrote his own Lyrical Ballad: "As I was walking up the street". Wordsworth features in Davy's poem as the recorder of ordinary lives in the line: "By poet Wordsworths Rymes" [sic].

Royal Institution
In 1799, Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) had proposed the establishment in London of an 'Institution for Diffusing Knowledge', i.e. the Royal Institution. The house in Albemarle Street was bought in April 1799. Rumford became secretary to the institution, and Dr Thomas Garnett was the first lecturer.

In February 1801 Davy was interviewed by the committee of the Royal Institution, comprising Joseph Banks, Benjamin Thompson and Henry Cavendish. Davy wrote to Davies Giddy on 8 March 1801 about the offers made by Banks and Thompson, a possible move to London and the promise of funding for his work in galvanism. He also mentioned that he might not be collaborating further with Beddoes on therapeutic gases. The next day Davy left Bristol to take up his new post at the Royal Institution, it having been resolved 'that Humphry Davy be engaged in the service of the Royal Institution in the capacity of assistant lecturer in chemistry, director of the chemical laboratory, and assistant editor of the journals of the institution, and that he be allowed to occupy a room in the house, and be furnished with coals and candles, and that he be paid a salary of 100l. per annum.'

On 25 April 1801, Davy gave his first lecture on the relatively new subject of 'Galvanism'. He and his friend Coleridge had had many conversations about the nature of human knowledge and progress, and Davy's lectures gave his audience a vision of human civilisation brought forward by scientific discovery. "It [science] has bestowed on him powers which may almost be called creative; which have enabled him to modify and change the beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power, not simply as a scholar, passive and seeking only to understand her operations, but rather as a master, active with his own instruments." The first lecture garnered rave reviews, and by the June lecture Davy wrote to John King that his last lecture had attendance of nearly 500 people. "There was Respiration, Nitrous Oxide, and unbounded Applause. Amen!" Davy revelled in his public status.

Women's scientific education
Davy's lectures included spectacular and sometimes dangerous chemical demonstrations along with scientific information, and were presented with considerable showmanship by the young and handsome man. Davy also included both poetic and religious commentary in his lectures, emphasizing that God's design was revealed by chemical investigations. Religious commentary was in part an attempt to appeal to women in his audiences. Davy, like many of his enlightenment contemporaries, supported female education and women's involvement in scientific pursuits, even proposing that women be admitted to evening events at the Royal Society. Davy acquired a large female following around London. In a satirical cartoon by Gillray, nearly half of the attendees pictured are female. His support of women caused Davy to be subjected to considerable gossip and innuendo, and to be criticised as unmanly.

Incandescent light and arc light
In 1802, Humphry Davy had what was then the most powerful electrical battery in the world at the Royal Institution. With it, Davy created the first incandescent light by passing electric current through a thin strip of platinum, chosen because the metal had an extremely high melting point. It was neither sufficiently bright nor long lasting enough to be of practical use, but demonstrated the principle. By 1806 he was able to demonstrate a much more powerful form of electric lighting to the Royal Society in London. It was an early form of arc light which produced its illumination from an electric arc created between two charcoal rods.

Full lecturer at the Royal Institution
When Davy's lecture series on Galvanism ended, he progressed to a new series on agricultural chemistry, and his popularity continued to skyrocket. By June 1802, after just over a year at the Institution and at the age of 23, Davy was nominated to full lecturer at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Garnett quietly resigned, citing health reasons.

Royal Society
In November 1804 Davy became a Fellow of the Royal Society, over which he would later preside. He was one of the founding members of the Geological Society in 1807 and was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1810 and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822.

Photographic enlargements
In June 1802 Davy published in the first issue of the Journals of the Royal Institution of Great Britain his ''An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver. Invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. With Observations by H. Davy'' in which he described their experiments with the photosensitivity of silver nitrate.

He recorded that "images of small objects, produced by means of the solar microscope, may be copied without difficulty on prepared paper." Josef Maria Eder, in his History of Photography, though crediting Wedgwood, because of his application of this quality of silver nitrate to the making of images, as "the first photographer in the world," proposes that it was Davy who realised the idea of photographic enlargement using a solar microscope to project images onto sensitised paper. Neither found a means of fixing their images, and Davy devoted no more of his time to furthering these early discoveries in photography.

The principle of image projection using solar illumination was applied to the construction of the earliest form of photographic enlarger, the "solar camera".

Potassium and sodium
Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis using the voltaic pile to split common compounds and thus prepare many new elements. He went on to electrolyse molten salts and discovered several new metals, including sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements known as the alkali metals. Davy discovered potassium in 1807, deriving it from caustic potash (KOH). Before the 19th century, no distinction had been made between potassium and sodium. Potassium was the first metal that was isolated by electrolysis. Davy isolated sodium in the same year by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide.

Barium, calcium, strontium, magnesium, and boron
During the first half of 1808, Davy conducted a series of further electrolysis experiments on alkaline earths including lime, magnesia, strontites and barytes. At the beginning of June, Davy received a letter from the Swedish chemist Berzelius claiming that he, in conjunction with Dr. Pontin, had successfully obtained amalgams of calcium and barium by electrolysing lime and barytes using a mercury cathode. Davy managed to successfully repeat these experiments almost immediately and expanded Berzelius' method to strontites and magnesia. He noted that while these amalgams oxidised in only a few minutes when exposed to air they could be preserved for lengthy periods of time when submerged in naphtha before becoming covered with a white crust. On 30 June 1808 Davy reported to the Royal Society that he had successfully isolated four new metals which he named barium, calcium, strontium and magnium (later changed to magnesium) which were subsequently published in the Philosophical Transactions. Although Davy conceded magnium was an "undoubtedly objectionable" name he argued the more appropriate name magnesium was already being applied to metallic manganese and wished to avoid creating an equivocal term. The observations gathered from these experiments also led to Davy isolating boron in 1809. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."

Chlorine
Chlorine was discovered in 1774 by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who called it "dephlogisticated marine acid" (see phlogiston theory) and mistakenly thought it contained oxygen. Davy showed that the acid of Scheele's substance, called at the time oxymuriatic acid, contained no oxygen. This discovery overturned Lavoisier's definition of acids as compounds of oxygen. In 1810, chlorine was given its current name by Humphry Davy, who insisted that chlorine was in fact an element. The name chlorine, chosen by Davy for "one of [the substance's] obvious and characteristic properties – its colour", comes from the Greek χλωρος (chlōros), meaning green-yellow.

Laboratory incident
Davy seriously injured himself in a laboratory accident with nitrogen trichloride. French chemist Pierre Louis Dulong had first prepared this compound in 1811, and had lost two fingers and an eye in two separate explosions with it. In a letter to John Children, on 16 November 1812, Davy wrote: "It must be used with great caution. It is not safe to experiment upon a globule larger than a pin's head. I have been severely wounded by a piece scarcely bigger. My sight, however, I am informed, will not be injured". Davy's accident induced him to hire Michael Faraday as a co-worker, particularly for assistance with handwriting and record keeping. He had recovered from his injuries by April 1813.

European tour
In 1812, Davy was knighted and gave up his lecturing position at the Royal Institution. He was given the title of Honorary Professor of Chemistry. He gave a farewell lecture to the Institution, and married a wealthy widow, Jane Apreece. (While Davy was generally acknowledged as being faithful to his wife, their relationship was stormy, and in later years he travelled to continental Europe alone.) Davy then published his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, part 1, volume 1, though other parts of this title were never completed. He made notes for a second edition, but it was never required. In October 1813, he and his wife, accompanied by Michael Faraday as his scientific assistant (also treated as a valet), travelled to France to collect the second edition of the prix du Galvanisme, a medal that Napoleon Bonaparte had awarded Davy for his electro-chemical work. Faraday noted "Tis indeed a strange venture at this time, to trust ourselves in a foreign and hostile country, where so little regard is had to protestations of honour, that the slightest suspicion would be sufficient to separate us for ever from England, and perhaps from life". Davy's party sailed from Plymouth to Morlaix by cartel, where they were searched.

Upon reaching Paris, Davy was a guest of honour at a meeting of the First Class of the Institut de France and met with André-Marie Ampère and other French chemists. It was later reported that Davy's wife had thrown the medal onto the sea, near her Cornish home, "as it raised bad memories". The Royal Society of Chemistry has offered over £1,800 for the recovery of the medal.

While in Paris, Davy attended lectures at the Ecole Polytechnique, including those by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac on a mysterious substance isolated by Bernard Courtois. Davy wrote a paper for the Royal Society on the element, which is now called iodine. This led to a dispute between Davy and Gay-Lussac on who had the priority on the research.

Davy's party did not meet Napoleon in person, but they did visit the Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais at the Château de Malmaison. The party left Paris in December 1813, travelling south to Italy. They sojourned in Florence, where using the burning glass of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in a series of experiments conducted with Faraday's assistance, Davy succeeded in using the sun's rays to ignite diamond, proving it is composed of pure carbon.

Davy's party continued to Rome, where he undertook experiments on iodine and chlorine and on the colours used in ancient paintings. This was the first chemical research on the pigments used by artists.

He also visited Naples and Mount Vesuvius, where he collected samples of crystals. By June 1814, they were in Milan, where they met Alessandro Volta, and then continued north to Geneva. They returned to Italy via Munich and Innsbruck, and when their plans to travel to Greece and Istanbul were abandoned after Napoleon's escape from Elba, they returned to England.

After the Battle of Waterloo, Davy wrote to Lord Liverpool urging that the French be treated with severity:

"My Lord, I need not say to Your Lordship that the capitulation of Paris not a treaty; lest everything belonging to the future state of that capital & of France is open to discussion & that France is a conquered country. It is the duty of the allies to give her more restricted boundaries which shall not encroach upon the natural limits of other nations.  to weaken her on the side of Italy, Germany & Flanders.  To take back from her by contributions the wealth she has acquired by them to suffer her to retain nothing that the republican or imperial armies have stolen:  This last duty is demanded no less by policy than justice."

Davy lamp

After his return to England in 1815, Davy began experimenting with lamps that could be used safely in coal mines. The Revd Dr Robert Gray of Bishopwearmouth in Sunderland, founder of the Society for Preventing Accidents in Coalmines, had written to Davy suggesting that he might use his 'extensive stores of chemical knowledge' to address the issue of mining explosions caused by firedamp, or methane mixed with oxygen, which was often ignited by the open flames of the lamps then used by miners. Incidents such as the Felling mine disaster of 1812 near Newcastle, in which 92 men were killed, not only caused great loss of life among miners but also meant that their widows and children had to be supported by the public purse. The Revd Gray and a fellow clergyman also working in a north-east mining area, the Revd John Hodgson of Jarrow, were keen that action should be taken to improve underground lighting and especially the lamps used by miners.

Davy conceived of using an iron gauze to enclose a lamp's flame, and so prevent the methane burning inside the lamp from passing out to the general atmosphere. Although the idea of the safety lamp had already been demonstrated by William Reid Clanny and by the then unknown (but later very famous) engineer George Stephenson, Davy's use of wire gauze to prevent the spread of flame was used by many other inventors in their later designs. George Stephenson's lamp was very popular in the north-east coalfields, and used the same principle of preventing the flame reaching the general atmosphere, but by different means. Unfortunately, although the new design of gauze lamp initially did seem to offer protection, it gave much less light, and quickly deteriorated in the wet conditions of most pits. Rusting of the gauze quickly made the lamp unsafe, and the number of deaths from firedamp explosions rose yet further.

There was some discussion as to whether Davy had discovered the principles behind his lamp without the help of the work of Smithson Tennant, but it was generally agreed that the work of the two men had been independent. Davy refused to patent the lamp, and its invention led to his being awarded the Rumford medal in 1816.

Acid studies
In 1815 Davy also suggested that acids were substances that contained replaceable hydrogen ions;– hydrogen that could be partly or totally replaced by reactive metals which are placed above hydrogen in the reactivity series. When acids reacted with metals they formed salts and hydrogen gas. Bases were substances that reacted with acids to form salts and water. These definitions worked well for most of the nineteenth century.

Herculaneum papyri
Davy experimented on fragments of the Herculaneum papyri before his departure to Naples in 1818. His early experiments showed hope of success. In his report to the Royal Society Davy writes that: 'When a fragment of a brown MS. in which the layers were strongly adhered, was placed in an atmosphere of chlorine, there was an immediate action, the papyrus smoked and became yellow, and the letters appeared much more distinct; and by the application of heat the layers separated from each other, giving fumes of muriatic acid.'

The success of the early trials prompted Davy to travel to Naples to conduct further research on the Herculaneum papyri. Accompanied by his wife, they set off on 26 May 1818 to stay in Flanders where Davy was invited by the coal miners to speak. They then traveled to Carniola (now Slovenia) which proved to become 'his favourite Alpine retreat' before finally arriving in Italy. In Italy, they befriended Lord Byron in Rome and then went on to travel to Naples.

Initial experiments were again promising and his work resulted in 'partially unrolling 23 MSS., from which fragments of writing were obtained' but after returning to Naples on 1 December 1819 from a summer in the Alps, Davy complained that 'the Italians at the museum [were] no longer helpful but obstructive'. Davy decided to renounce further work on the papyri because 'the labour, in itself difficult and unpleasant, been made more so, by the conduct of the persons at the head of this department in the Museum'.

Election to the presidency
On 20 October 1818, Davy was created a baronet; this was the first such honour conferred on a man of science in Britain. It was followed a year later with the presidency of the Royal Society. The Society was in transition from a club for gentlemen interested in natural philosophy, connected with the political and social elite, to an academy representing increasingly specialised sciences. The previous president, Joseph Banks, had held the post for over 40 years and had presided autocratically over what David Philip Miller calls the "Banksian Learned Empire", in which natural history was prominent. Banks had groomed Davies Gilbert to succeed him and preserve the status quo, but Gilbert declined to stand. Fellows who thought royal patronage was important proposed Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (later Leopold I of Belgium), who also withdrew, as did the Whig Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset. Davy was the outstanding scientist but some fellows did not approve of his popularising work at the Royal Institution.

Elections took place on St Andrew's Day and Davy was elected on 30 November 1820. Although he was unopposed, other candidates had received initial backing. These candidates embodied the factional difficulties that beset Davy's presidency and which eventually defeated him. The strongest alternative had been William Hyde Wollaston, who was supported by the "Cambridge Network" of outstanding mathematicians such as Charles Babbage and John Herschel, who tried to block Davy. They were aware that Davy supported some modernisation, but thought that he would not sufficiently encourage aspiring young mathematicians, astronomers and geologists, who were beginning to form specialist societies. Davy was only 41, and reformers were fearful of another long presidency.

In his early years Davy was optimistic about reconciling the reformers and the Banksians. In his first speech as president he declared, "I trust that, with these new societies, we shall always preserve the most amicable relations ... I am sure there is no desire in [the Royal Society] to exert anything like patriarchal authority in relation to these institutions".

Protection of ships' bottoms
From 1761 onwards, copper plating had been fitted to the undersides of Royal Navy ships to protect the wood from attack by shipworms. However, the copper bottoms were gradually corroded by exposure to the salt water. Between 1823 and 1825, Davy, assisted by Michael Faraday, attempted to protect the copper by electrochemical means. He attached to the copper sacrificial pieces of zinc or iron, which provided cathodic protection to the host metal. It was discovered, however, that protected copper became foul quickly, i.e. pieces of weed and/or marine creatures became attached to the hull, which had a detrimental effect on the handling of the ship. The Navy Board approached Davy in 1823, asking for help with the corrosion. Davy conducted a number of tests in Portsmouth Dockyard, which led to the Navy Board adopting the use of Davy's "protectors". By 1824, it had become apparent that fouling of the copper bottoms was occurring on the majority of protected ships. By the end of 1825, the Admiralty ordered the Navy Board to cease fitting the protectors to sea-going ships, and to remove those that had already been fitted. Davy's scheme was seen as a public failure, despite success of the corrosion protection as such. As Frank A. J. L. James explains, "[Because] the poisonous salts from [corroding] copper were no longer entering the water, there was nothing to kill the barnacles and the like in the vicinity of a ship. This meant that barnacles [and the like] could now attach themselves to the bottom of a vessel, thus impeding severely its steerage, much to the anger of the captains who wrote to the Admiralty to complain about Davy's protectors."

Presidency
Davy spent much time juggling the factions but, as his reputation declined in the light of failures such as his research into copper-bottomed ships, he lost popularity and authority. This was compounded by a number of political errors. In 1825 his promotion of the new Zoological Society, of which he was a founding fellow, courted the landed gentry and alienated expert zoologists. He offended the mathematicians and reformers by failing to ensure that Babbage received one of the new Royal Medals (a project of his) or the vacant secretaryship of the Society in 1826. In 1826 Davy suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. In November 1826 the mathematician Edward Ryan recorded that: "The Society, every member almost ... are in the greatest rage at the President's proceedings and nothing is now talked of but removing him."

In the event he was again re-elected unopposed, but he was now visibly unwell. In January 1827 he set off to Italy for reasons of his health. It did not improve and, as the 1827 election loomed, it was clear that he would not stand again. He was succeeded by Davies Gilbert.

Final years
Davy's laboratory assistant, Michael Faraday, went on to enhance Davy's work and would become the more famous and influential scientist. Davy is supposed to have even claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery. Davy later accused Faraday of plagiarism, however, causing Faraday (the first Fullerian Professor of Chemistry) to cease all research in electromagnetism until his mentor's death.

According to one of Davy's biographers, June Z. Fullmer, he was a deist.

Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he "had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poet of his age", and Southey said that "he had all the elements of a poet; he only wanted the art." In spite of his ungainly exterior and peculiar manner, his happy gifts of exposition and illustration won him extraordinary popularity as a lecturer, his experiments were ingenious and rapidly performed, and Coleridge went to hear him "to increase his stock of metaphors." The dominating ambition of his life was to achieve fame; occasional petty jealousy did not diminish his concern for the "cause of humanity", to use a phrase often employed by him in connection with his invention of the miners' lamp. Careless about etiquette, his frankness sometimes exposed him to annoyances he might have avoided by the exercise of tact.

Death
Davy spent the last months of his life writing Consolations in Travel, an immensely popular, somewhat freeform compendium of poetry, thoughts on science and philosophy. Published posthumously, the work became a staple of both scientific and family libraries for several decades afterward. Davy spent the winter in Rome, hunting in the Campagna on his fiftieth birthday. But on 20 February 1829 he had another stroke. After spending many months attempting to recuperate, Davy died in a room at L'Hotel de la Couronne, in the Rue du Rhone, in Geneva, Switzerland, on 29 May 1829. An appendix to his will had included his last wishes; that there be no post-mortem, that he be buried where he died, and that there be an interval between the two, to ensure that he was not merely comatose. But the ordinances of the city did not allow such an interval and his funeral took place on the following Monday, 1 June, in the Plainpalais Cemetery, outside the city walls.

Geographical locations

 * Shortly after his funeral, his wife organised a memorial tablet for him in Westminster Abbey at a cost of £142.
 * In 1872, a statue of Davy was erected in front of the Market Building, Penzance, (now owned by Lloyds TSB) at the top of Market Jew Street, Penzance.
 * A commemorative slate plaque on 4 Market Jew Street, Penzance, claims the location as his birthplace. A secondary school in Coombe Road, Penzance, is named Humphry Davy School.
 * A pub at 32 Alverton Street, Penzance, is named "The Sir Humphry Davy".
 * One of the science buildings of the University of Plymouth is named The Davy Building.
 * There is a road named Humphry Davy Way adjacent to the docks in Bristol.
 * Outside the entrance to Sunderland Football Club's Stadium of Light stands a giant Davy Lamp, in recognition of local mining heritage and the importance of Davy's safety lamp to the mining industry.
 * There is a street named Humphry-Davy-Straße in the industrial quarter of the town of Cuxhaven, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
 * A satellite of the University of Sheffield at Golden Smithies Lane in Wath upon Dearne (Manvers) was called Humphry Davy House and was home to the School of Nursing and Midwifery until April 2009.
 * Davy Sound in Greenland was named in his honour by William Scoresby (1789–1857).
 * There is a 'zone of activity' commercial area in La Grand-Combe, Gard, France, a former mining town, named after Davy.
 * Mount Davy in New Zealand's Paparoa Range was named after him by Julius von Haast.

Scientific and literary recognition

 * in 1827, the mineral davyne was named in his honour by W. Haidinger.
 * Annually since 1877, the Royal Society of London has awarded the Davy Medal "for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry."
 * The Davy lunar crater is named after him. It has a diameter of 34 km and its coordinates are 11.8S, 8.1W.
 * Davy's passion for fly-fishing earned him the informal title "the father of modern fly-fishing", and his book Salmonia is often considered to be "the fly-fisherman bible".
 * The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said he "attended Davy's lectures to enlarge my stock of metaphors".

Novels and poetry

 * Davy is the subject of a humorous song by Richard Gendall, recorded in 1980 by folk-singer Brenda Wootton in the album Boy Jan Cornishman, the seven verses of which each recall a day of the week on which Davy purportedly made a particular discovery.

 * English playwright Nick Darke wrote Laughing Gas (2005) a comedy script about the life of Sir Humphry Davy, unfinished at the time of Nick Darke's death; completed posthumously by actor and playwright Carl Grose and produced by the Truro-based production company O-region.

 * Edmund Clerihew Bentley's first clerihew, published in 1905, was written about Sir Humphry Davy:
 * Sir Humphry Davy
 * Abominated gravy.
 * He lived in the odium
 * Of having discovered sodium.

 * There is a humorous rhyme of unknown origin about the statue in Penzance:
 * Sir Humphrey Davy's kindly face,
 * Is turned away from Market Place
 * Towards St Michael's Mount
 * So, if he do want to tell the time
 * He've got to wait till the clock do chime
 * Then he's forced to count.

 * Jules Verne refers to Davy's geological theories in his 1864 novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Television and film

 * On the 2021 TV show Avenue 5, when asked who he is referring to, Captain Ryan, played by Hugh Laurie, responds, "Who do you think? Sir Humphrey Davy?"
 * Davy and his arc lamp are briefly mentioned in Bridgerton's season 3, episode 3.

Publications
See Fullmer's work for a full list of Davy's articles.

Humphry Davy's books are as follows: Davy also contributed articles on chemistry to Rees's Cyclopædia, but the topics are not known.
 * (on Davy's safety lamp)
 * (on Davy's safety lamp)
 * (on Davy's safety lamp)
 * (on Davy's safety lamp)

His collected works were published in 1839–1840:

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Humphry Davy


text:
Talk:Humphry Davy

Edit-a-thon: 4 May 2017
Hello, just to let you know, next week Lancaster University will be hosting an edit-a-thon focusing on Humphry Davy. See the event page here: WP:DAVY. So don't be alarmed if there is activity on this page from several new users! :-) Mark MacD (talk) 09:44, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Positioning of reference for a blockquote
Regarding this second revert. what does WP:MOS say about the positioning of a reference for a blockquote? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:10, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

"Cornish" (again)
Already extensively discussed previously (see Talk:Humphry Davy/Archive 1 and Talk:Humphry Davy/Archive 1) When did any consensus to use "Cornish" emerge? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:17, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And no clear consensus emerged, certainly not the last time. The first one was mainly about whether to have an ethnicity field in the infobox saying Cornish. I certainly do not believe the claims made that people will be confused by using Cornish, properly linked, in the text. To admit that they would be so confused would be to regard our readers as congenital idiots. What has happened recently is someone has turned up and changed Cornish to English without any discussion or explanation, and another editor and I have restored what it said before. DuncanHill (talk) 17:46, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The encyclopaedia Britannica has him as English. Should it be changed to English.18:38, 4 December 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Halbared (talk • contribs)
 * EB also calls him British. DuncanHill (talk) 18:46, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * EB lists him under British chemists as a header, like all British chemists (scientists) and in his bio/lede puts him as an English chemist, like other English chemists.Halbared (talk) 18:56, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I really don't see how changing it would improve the article. I'm slightly surprised that someone would resurrect a thread over a year old, instead of starting a new one under an appropriate header. DuncanHill (talk) 19:05, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Depends if it's accurate or not. As it's the same topic, I didn't see why a new thread was needed as you two last discussed it. I looked at a few other good sites, and those who wrote bio's on Davy. A leaning towards English seems to be there.Halbared (talk) 19:27, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * A reasonable view point but you have to ask if the people writing the bios are truly neutral or if they are the same people who list famous Scottish inventors / scientists as British? I think its rather safe to say that Humphry Davy was fond of, and indeed influenced by his upbringing in Cornwall, much like Richard Trevithick. I don't find ethnicity being listed as Cornish particularly egregious. It's not like he was born in Cornwall and moved at a young age. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elit3powars (talk • contribs) 19:29, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Davy's geological theories
The In popular culture section correctly notes:

> Jules Verne refers to Davy's geological theories in his 1864 novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth

It would be great to speak more of his geological beliefs and studies. Some possible sources

 * https://www.jstor.org/stable/4025808
 * https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328441238_Negative_Geology_Humphry_Davy_and_forming_the_Royal_Institution's_Mineral_Collection_1803-1806
 * https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/geological-theory
 * https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/352749?journalCode=isis
 * https://frenchquest.com/2021/11/09/jules-vernes-geological-paleontological-journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth%EF%BF%BC/
 * https://digital.libraries.uc.edu/oesper/books/davy/index.html
 * https://www.amazon.com/Humphry-Davy-Geology-Lectures-Audience/dp/0299080307 (if somebody wants to buy a copy...)
 * https://www.nature.com/articles/288743a0

-- Dan Griscom (talk) 17:49, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Proper Annunciation of his discovery.
Sir Humphrey Davey is known for many things including aluminum. The spelling and denunciation of this word is incorrect on his known for section. Sir Humphrey Davey patented his Discovery as aluminum originally spelling it alumium; and later deciding on aluminum. The person who discovers an isolates an element is the person who gets to name it; and no one else. A lot of Brits call it aluminum because a bunch of Humphreys colleagues later changed it in an article to aluminium having an extra I in it's spelling because they felt that it went better with the other elements that end in ium. Colleagues in a scientific journal do not get to change or rename your discovery. The reason that Americans still enunciated the right way is an homage to Mr Humphrey for all that his Discovery did for our country. Which is all the more reason I don't understand why Brits argue this because Humphrey Davey was also a Brit and yet British people still argue the Annunciation of this while America is paying homage. If people want to keep calling it aluminium that's fine but they are incorrect, it is aluminum. 2601:985:4301:9C0:C8F2:D487:AC26:E6D3 (talk) 14:49, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

 * What about Mr Mendeleev? Maybe an historical footnote would help. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:05, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Isn't it sir Humphry DAVY, not Davey?
 * Only because I am a Davy and have been told of family connection 121.45.67.157 (talk) 05:04, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Humphry Davy