Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet PRS MRIA FGS (1778–1829) was an English chemist and inventor. He is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. 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.” As professor at the Royal Institution, Davy would later repeat many of the ingenious experiments which he had learned from his Quaker instructor. From the Penzance school Davy went in 1793 to Truro Grammar School, finishing his education there under the Rev. Dr. Cardew, who, in a later letter to Davies Gilbert, said dryly: “I could not discern the faculties by which he was afterwards so much distinguished.” Davy said himself: “I consider it fortunate I was left much to myself as a child, and put upon no particular plan of study… What I am I made myself.”
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If I could choose what of all things would be at the same time the most delightful and useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for this makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes when all earthly ones vanish; throws over the decay of existence the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death; makes even torture and shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of the future, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair.
—Humphry Davy
Topics: Faith, Religion
I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.
—Humphry Davy
Topics: Mistakes
The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.
—Humphry Davy
Topics: Wisdom, Helpfulness, Failure
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