Between Hostile Camps: Sir Humphry Davy's Presidency of The Royal Society of London, 1820–1827

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Philip Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
World Wide ◽  
British Society ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Science ◽  
Humphry Davy ◽  
Royal Society Of London

The career of Humphry Davy (1778–1829) is one of the fairy tales of early nineteenth-century British science. His rise from obscure Cornish origins to world-wide eminence as a chemical discoverer, to popular celebrity amongst London's scientific audiences, to a knighthood from the Prince Regent, and finally to the Presidency of the Royal Society, provide apposite material for Smilesian accounts of British society as open to talents. But the use of Davy's career to illustrate the thesis that ‘genius will out’ is not without its problems. As Davy began to reap the benefits of his early chemical discoveries, and to acquire status and wealth, his dedication to research waned. The ‘new’ Davy who emerged in the years after Waterloo, though admired by many sections of the metropolitan scientific community, was also widely criticized. Ambivalence became marked with Davy's election to, and conduct in, the Presidency of the Royal Society.

scholarly journals ‘A devotion to the experimental sciences and arts’: the subscription to the great battery at the Royal Institution 1808–9

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICK UNWIN ◽  
ROBERT UNWIN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Research Funding ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Institutional Research ◽  
British Science ◽  
Royal Institution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Humphry Davy ◽  
The Individual

A significant but neglected theme in the history of British science in the nineteenth century is the funding of institutional research. The subscription to the ‘great battery’ at the Royal Institution in 1808 and 1809 provides the first instance of named individuals prepared to commit themselves to the provision of apparatus to be used for research in the new field of electrochemistry. This paper analyses the subscribers who were deemed to be ‘enlightened’ and whom Humphry Davy subsequently described as ‘a few zealous cultivators and patrons of science’. Using information from the subscription list, a distinction is made between the individual subscriptions pledged and the sums actually paid. In contextualizing the subscription, insights are provided into the Royal Society, the contemporary scientific community and the politics of metropolitan science. The voltaic subscription represents an early example of the repercussions of the nature of research funding for institutional finances and governance.

The Royal Society’s first rejection of the kinetic theory of gases (1821), John Herapath versus Humphry Davy

1963 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-180 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Kinetic Theory ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Kinetic Theory Of Gases ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Mathematical Inquiry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Humphry Davy ◽  
Apparent Similarity ◽  
Caloric Theory

On 24 May 1820 a manuscript entitled ‘A Mathematical Inquiry into the Causes, Laws and Principal Phenomena of Heat, Gases, Gravitation, etc.’ was submitted to Davies Gilbert for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society . The author was John Herapath (1790-1868), and his article included a comprehensive (if somewhat faulty) exposition of the kinetic theory of gases. Sir Humphry Davy, who assumed the Presidency of the Royal Society on 30 November 1820, became primarily responsible for the fate of the article and wrote several letters to Herapath concerning it. After it became clear that there was considerable opposition to its publication by the Royal Society, Herapath withdrew the article and sent it instead to the Annals of Philosophy , where it appeared in 1821 (1). Herapath’s theory received little notice from scientists until thirty-five years later, when the kinetic theory was revived by Joule, Krönig, Clausius, and Maxwell. The incident is significant in the history of physical science because it illustrates an important distinction between the two doctrines concerning the nature of heat—the kinetic and the vibration theories—a distinction which is often forgotten because of the apparent similarity of both doctrines as contrasted with the caloric theory. It also throws some light on the character of early nineteenth century British science, both in and out of the Royal Society.

Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending "Critical Attitudes" in the Face of Societal Ruination

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Wallbank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Literary Techniques

Adrian J. Wallbank, "Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending 'Critical Attitudes' in the Face of Societal Ruination" (pp. 1–36) In the aftermath of the French "Revolution Controversy," middle-class evangelical writers made a concerted effort to rehabilitate the moral fabric of British society. Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98) are recognized as pivotal within this program, but in this essay I question whether they were really as influential as has been supposed. I argue that autobiographical evidence from the period demonstrates an increasing skepticism toward overt didacticism, and that despite their significant and undeniable penetration within working-class culture, the Cheap Repository Tracts, if not all "received ideologies," were increasingly being rejected by their readers. This essay examines the important contribution that Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues (1801) made to this arena. Hill, like many of his contemporaries, felt that British society was facing ruination, but he also recognized that overt moralizing and didacticism was no longer palatable or effective. I argue that Hill thus experimented with an array of literary techniques—many of which closely intersect with developments occurring within the novel and sometimes appear to contradict or undermine the avowed seriousness of evangelicalism—that not only attempt to circumvent what Jonathan Rose has described as the "critical attitudes" of early-nineteenth-century readers, but also effectively map the "transitional" nature of the shifting literary and social terrains of the period. In so doing, Hill contributed signally to the evolution of the dialogue form (which is often synonymous with mentoring and didacticism), since his use of conversational mimesis and satire predated the colloquialism of John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae (1822–35) and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824–29).

scholarly journals ‘A Kind of Geological Novel’: Wales and Travel Writing, 1783–1819

Romanticism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
Geological Map ◽  
Humphry Davy

This article explores the layered and multivocal nature of Romantic-period travel writing in Wales through the theme of geology. Beginning with an analysis of the spectral sense of place that emerges from William Smith's 1815 geological map of England and Wales, it considers a range of travel texts, from the stones and fossils of Thomas Pennant's A Tour in Wales (1778–83), to Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday's early nineteenth-century Welsh travels, to little-known manuscript accounts. Wales is still the least-researched of the home nations in terms of the Enlightenment and the Romantic period, despite recent and ongoing work that has done much to increase its visibility. Travel writing, meanwhile, is a form whose popularity in the period is now little recognised. These points doubly position Welsh travel writing on the fringes of our field, in an outlying location compounded by the genre's status as a category that defies easy definition.

Furious Brainstorming

2020 ◽  
pp. 273-302
Author(s):  
Anton Howes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter analyzes the Royal Society of Arts' renewed openness to ideas in the mid-1970s, which was led by its secretary, Christopher Lucas. It also mentions Arthur Aikin, who pioneered the practice of giving lectures for instruction and entertainment in the early nineteenth century. It also talks about how Samuel More used his connections to recruit members among the late eighteenth century's inventors, such as John 'Iron Mad' Wilkinson or Josiah Wedgwood. The chapter focuses on the secretary's job in the Society, which involved taking minutes at general and sub-committee meetings, listing of subscribers and drafts for the advertisements of the premiums, and managing the Society's correspondence. It also examines how the secretary combines their influence over recruitment with their ability to manipulate their unparalleled knowledge of the Society's administrative and electoral processes.

A mad house transformed: the lives and work of Charles James Beverly FRS (1788–1868) and John Warburton MD FRS (1795–1847)

2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-281
Author(s):  
E. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Superintendent

Bethnal Green Asylum was the most notorious of the scandalous early nineteenth–century private madhouses exposed in two parliamentary Select Committees of 1815/16 and 1827. From being vilified as the worst asylum in the country, this huge and important institution was transformed over 15 years into one of the best by two determined men, both Fellows of The Royal Society, John Warburton MD, the proprietor, and Charles James Beverly, the medical superintendent, former naval surgeon, naturalist and Arctic explorer. This paper describes their hitherto unrecorded biographies.

Fit to print? Referee reports on mathematics for the nineteenth-century journals of the Royal Society of London

2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sloan Evans Despeaux
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Scientific Societies ◽  
Royal Society Of London

The Royal Society was one of the first British scientific societies to establish a peer review process for papers submitted to its journals. Initially, its peer review procedures were at best informal, but by the 1830s they became a formal, required gateway for all Royal Society submissions. This paper focuses on referee reports of mathematical papers submitted to the Society from 1832 to 1900, years covered in the first 15 volumes of referee reports archived at the Royal Society Library. Besides judging the content of papers, mathematical referees during this period discussed issues of professionalization and politics in their reports.

That Kind Urbanity of Manner

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coll Thrush
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
British Society ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century

This chapter analyzes how London became a place driven by ritual. As scholars of the early nineteenth century have noted, British society experienced a social revolution in which an ever more formal culture “acquired taboos, introduced strict rules of propriety, and became reticent about sex and the emotions revolting from the customs of their elders.” The word most often used to describe this new reality was “manners.” Simultaneously lauded and lambasted by authors from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens, ritual, in the form of manners, comportment, sentiment, and protocol, began to transform Georgian values into what would eventually come to be known as Victorian culture.

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