Born in Penzance in 1778, Humphry Davy's scientific reputation grew with his pioneering discoveries of nitrous oxide (laughing gas), sodium, calcium and the invention of the miners' Davy lamp. Yet, as Lamont-Brown shows, Davy was not just a scientific pioneer but a man with wide-ranging interests at the centre of London life. A founder member of the Geological Society and co-founder with Sir Stamford Raffles of London Zoo, Davy was also a poet of some ability, enjoying the respect and lively friendship of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth among others. Eclectic and brilliant, one of his greatest contributions was, however, to communicate science to a wider public; he was a man for his own time and ours.
