Public invited to shine a light on Sir Humphry Davy project

The University’s ‘Davy Notebooks Project’ team will run their first library workshop event at Lancaster Central Library on Thursday, March 21 from noon to 2pm.

Participants will be invited to research and create new notes for information such as the people, places and chemical terms that appear on the pages of the 19th Century chemist and poet’s laboratory notebooks that he used at the Royal Institution in London.

These notes will then appear on the digital edition of the notebooks on Lancaster Digital Collections, an open-access collection available for members of the public to use online.

At the event, Professor Sharon Ruston, who heads the project, will discuss the poetry that has been discovered recently in Davy’s notebooks – making national headlines.

Sir Humphry (1778-1829), known for his invention of the miners’ lamp used widely in Britain and abroad, was the foremost chemist of the early 19th Century.

He isolated more elements than any other individual has before or since, including calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium.

He was also the first person to inhale nitrous oxide and research its physiological effects.

In 1820 he became President of the Royal Society and is well known as a bridging figure between the ‘two cultures’ of the arts and sciences.

Notebook pages — torn, stained, and burned — reveal that Davy wrote poetry in his laboratory while at his scientific work.

Launched in 2019 at Lancaster University, the Davy Notebooks Project, with the help of nearly 3500 Zooniverse volunteers, has transcribed Davy’s entire notebook collection.

Now the project team are looking for help annotating these notebooks as they are prepared for the digital edition.

No prior experience is required as attendees will be fully-guided in the session by Davy Notebooks Research Associate Dr Rebekah Musk on how to research and submit new notes for Davy’s notebooks.

“We’re asking members of the public to help us find out who and what Davy was writing about in his notebooks,” explains Professor Ruston.

“We’ll demonstrate how to search for the people behind the names he refers to, or the places he mentions, or the chemicals he’s using in his experiments.

“There are thousands of references like these in his notebooks and, once we identify who or what Davy’s referring to, we can write a note to accompany the text.

“This will help the reader when they come to look at the notebooks online.”

The event at Lancaster Central Library is free, but tickets need to be prebooked here:

https://events.apps.lancashire.gov.uk/w/webpage/event-details?eventid=367211

This will form a series of five library workshops being run across the North West over the coming months. On Friday, April 19 the team will run a workshop event at Penketh Library, Warrington.