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Edmund Davy FRS (1785 – 5 November 1857)Christopher F. Lindsey, 'Davy, Edmund (1785–1857)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 6 April 2008 was a professor of chemistry at the Royal Cork Institution from 1813 and at the Royal Dublin Society from 1826.Leslie Stephen (Ed.). Dictionary of National Biography, Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1888, Vol. XIV, p.185. He discovered acetylene, as it was later namedAmerican Council of Learned Societies. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1981, Vol. 2, p.67. by Marcellin Berthelot. He was also an original member of the Chemical Society, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
Edmund, the son of William Davy, was born in Penzance, Cornwall, and lived there throughout his teen years. He moved to London in 1804 to spend eight years as operator and assistant to Humphry Davy in the Royal Institution laboratory, which he kept in order. For a large part of that time, Edmund was also superintendent of the Royal Society's mineralogical collection. When, in October 1807, Humphry accomplished the electrolytic preparation of potassium and saw the minute globules of the quicksilver-like metal burst through the crust and take fire, Edmund described that his cousin was so delighted with this achievement that he danced about the room in ecstasy.Robert Siegfried. The Discovery of Potassium and Sodium, and the Problem of the Chemical Elements, Isis, Vol. 54, No. 2. (Jun., 1963), p.248 gives as footnote 5: "Humphry's brother John reported the story from an account by their cousin Edmund Davy, who was at the time Humphry's assistant. John Davy (ed.), The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1839-1840, 9 volumes. Vol. I, p.109. "
Humphry Davy's younger brother, Dr. John Davy, (24 May 1790 – 24 Jan 1868) also was a chemist who spent some time (1808–1811) assisting Humphry in his chemistry research at the Royal Institution. John was the first to prepare and name phosgene gas.American Council of Learned Societies. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1981, Vol. 3, p.604.
Edmund William Davy (born in 1826), son of Edmund Davy, became professor of medicine in the Royal College, Dublin, in 1870. That they cooperated in research is shown in a notice to the Royal Irish Academy on the manufacture of sulphuric acid which Edmund Davy ends with an acknowledgement of the assistance he received in his experiments given by his son, Edmund William Davy.Edmund Davy. On the Manufacture of Sulphuric Acid, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, M.H. Gill, Dublin, 1850, Vol. IV., pp.297-299
In the Report of the British Association for 1835 he was the first to publish a series of experiments investigating the protective power of zinc employed in simple contact and in massive form. Shortly thereafter a French engineer, M. Sorel, secured a patent for a process of coating an iron surface with fluid zinc to protect against rust, and the technique was adopted by manufacturers of galvanized iron. Davy claimed priority of discovery, but it was found that a patent had long before been issued, on 26 September 1791 to Madame Leroi de Jancourt for the protection of metals with a coating of an alloy of zinc, bismuth and tin (though without a knowledge of the chemical principles involved).Massachusetts State Board of Heath. The Use of Zinced or Galvanized Iron for the Storage and Conveyance of Drinking-Water, Fifth Annual Report, Jan 1874, p.490.
This is an example of cathodic protection, an electrochemical technique developed in 1824 by Humphry Davy to prevent galvanic corrosion. He had recommended that the Admiralty should attach iron blocks to protect the copper sheathing on the hulls of Navy vessels. (The method was shortly discontinued because of an unfortunate side effect - the speed of the ships was reduced by increased fouling by marine life. The protective method reduced the release of copper ions that had otherwise poisoned the organisms and controlled their growth.)American Council of Learned Societies. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1981, Vol. 3, p.603
In the paper he read to the British Association at Bristol, Davy anticipated the value of acetylene as an illuminating gas: "From the brilliance with which the new gas burns in contact with the atmosphere it is, in the opinion of the author, admirably adapted for the purpose of artificial light, if it can be procured at a cheap rate."William Joseph Dibdin. "Acetylene," Public Lighting by Gas and Electricity, Chap. XXIX, p.489.
Thereafter it was forgotten until Marcellin Berthelot rediscovered this hydrocarbon compound in 1860, for which he coined the name "acetylene."
He also studied the uptake of arsenic by crops from artificial manures chemically prepared with sulphuric acid in which it was not usual to have arsenic as an impurity. Testing the growth of plants, he found "that arsenic might be taken up in considerable quantities by plants without destroying their vitality, or appearing even to interfere with their proper functions." He understood that arsenic was a cumulative poison, and that with continued consumption the "substance may collect in the system till its amount may exercise an injurious effect on the health of men and animals."A summary in the article "Scientific Intelligence, Botany and Zoology," American Journal of Science, 1859, Vol. XXVIII., p.443-444 gives that the paper is published in the London, Dublin, and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine, Aug. 1859, p.108.
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