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
William Vernon Harcourt (scientist) love of that science. On leaving the university in 1811, Harcourt began his duties as a clergyman at Bishopthorpe, Yorkshire and actively aided the movement for establishing an institution in Yorkshire for the cultivation of science. He constructed a laboratory, and occupied himself in chemical analysis, aided by his early friends Davy and Wollaston. In 1821, remains of prehistoric life found by Buckland in the cavern of Kirkdale went to form the basis of a museum, connected with the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, of which Harcourt was the first president. In 1824, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.