Humphry Davy

Humphry Davy was an English chemist who used the newly invented electric battery to isolate several elements never before obtained in pure form. Beginning in 1807, Davy passed electric current through molten compounds in a process called electrolysis and in this way isolated potassium and sodium for the first time, and the following year used the same method to isolate calcium, strontium, barium and magnesium. He also proposed that chlorine was itself an element rather than a compound containing oxygen, correcting the prevailing view of the time, and he invented the Davy lamp, a safety lamp enclosed in fine wire mesh that let coal miners work near flammable firedamp gas with sharply reduced risk of explosion. Davy served for many years as a leading figure of the Royal Institution in London, delivering popular public lectures on chemistry, and he hired and mentored Michael Faraday, who began as his laboratory assistant and went on to become one of the most influential scientists of the century.