Humphry Davy Davy's laboratory assistant, Michael Faraday, went on to enhance Davy's work and would become the more famous and influential scientist. Davy is supposed to have even claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery. Davy later accused Faraday of plagiarism, however, causing Faraday (the first Fullerian Professor of Chemistry) to cease all research in electromagnetism until his mentor's death. Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he "had not been the
Edmund Davy 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. Humphry Davy's younger brother, Dr. John Davy, (24 May