Humphry Davy its potential anaesthetic properties in relieving pain during surgery. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture "On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity" "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry." Davy was a baronet, President of the Royal Society (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), and Fellow of the Geological Society (FGS). He also invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He joked that his assistant Michael Faraday was his greatest discovery. Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall in England on 17 December 1778. Davy's brother, John Davy, writes
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.