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
John Davy (chemist) John Davy (chemist) John Davy FRS FRSE (24 May 1790 – 24 January 1868) was a Cornish doctor, amateur chemist, and brother of the noted chemist Sir Humphry Davy, and cousin of Edmund Davy. John Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall, on 24 May 1790, the son of Robert Davy and his wife, Grace Millet. He assisted his older brother Humphry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain for two years before heading to Edinburgh University, where he earned his degree in medicine in 1814. Davy is perhaps most noted for his discovery of phosgene in 1812, a compound he