DAVY
1778-1829
TWO years after the Declaration of Independence of America, and the same year that an alliance between France and America was signed, England's great chemist, Humphry Davy, was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on 17th December 1778—four years after the discovery of oxygen.
He went to school until he was fifteen years of age, and was then apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary. In these young days he was endowed with great observing power and a keen appreciation of Nature. In 1798 he began the study of chemistry by reading Lavoisier's Traité de Chimie; and about this time Davy became acquainted with Mr Davies Gilbert (afterwards President of the Royal Society) and Dr Beddoes. He was employed by the latter to superintend the Pneumatic Institution at Bristol, and from this date his scientific career began—a career that placed Davy's name in the front rank of scientific investigators. " His was an ardent boyhood," says Professor Forbes; " educated in a manner somewhat irregular, and
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