Two hot Chemists walk into a bar...

Some time ago I received an email from my friend, Joanna. She's getting her PhD in History and Sociology of Science (specializing in cold storage in the creation of bio banks.) (!) So along with many interesting facts and figures, she's come across some Historical Hot Guys in her studies. (Mostly Scientists, I think.)

Her note went a little something like this:

"You should do something on Humphry Davy! He was apparently the hottest chemist of the entire romantic era -- or maybe even evah!"

Done! And this is a special TWO FOR ONE DEAL since Sir Davy had a incredibly fine lab partner. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

Behold! Sir Humphry Davy: Chemist, Lecturer, Poet, Physicist, Hot Guy!

Seriously? He's so dreamy, it's a little ridiculous. Even in black and white! Let's see another...this time in color...

Look...he's all pensive and shit. In this painting he looks ever so slightly mischievous too. Kinda like he's thinking about blowing something up. (And in fact, as a young man, he was dismissed as an apothecary apprentice when his idle experiments led to explosions of varying degrees. He humbly said later, "The most important of my discoveries has been suggested to me by my failures." That's a nice way of dressing up "creating small fires")

He was born in England in 1778. He had a talent for science at any early age. As a young man, his first area of interest was "investigating the medical powers of factitious airs and gases." His favorite? Nitrous oxide. While he didn't discover it, he sure "experimented" with it quite a bit. (And by "experimented" I mean he was "addicted.") I wish I could say he paved the way for the use of "laughing gas" as an anesthetic...but he didn't. But I hear he had some raging parties. (He did note in Researches, Chemical and Philosophical [1800] the "analgesic effect of nitrous oxide and its potential to be used for surgical operations." But that didn't happen until well after his death. 'Doh!)

In 1801, he took a post at The Royal Institution in London, where he found his true love. Electrolysis. Yup, we think of it solely as a hair removal process now...but actually it's "a method of using a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction." With that, the guy discovered:

sodium
potassium
calcium
magnesium
strontium
boron
barium

It's not just the label on a Centrum bottle...that's his resume!

He also dubbed dephlogisticated marine acid "chlorine" (It's much catchier, no?) AND he helped some other scientists flesh out "iodine."

His lectures were quite popular and naturally "the young and handsome Davy acquired a huge female following around London." (Thus, the "hottest Chemist of the Romantic era" stuff.) And if all THAT wasn't enough, he composed poetry, invented a miner's lamp and wrote a book about fly-fishing.

And if you're still not impressed, he was the FIRST SUBJECT EVER of a clerihew. Madness, you say! (I didn't know what it was either.) Edmund Clerihew Bentley wrote:

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Oh and there's a lunar crater named after him.

There was a slight mishap in Sir Davy's laboratory in his later years. He screwed up his eyesight when an experiment with nitrogen trichloride went a little sideways. This accident led him to take on an assistant...a Hot Guy by the name of Michael Faraday.



Granted, he doesn't have the same "zing" in his eyes but I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers. Or in his case, electrifying crackers.

He built on Davy's work. He discovered "electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and laws of electrolysis." As a Chemist he discovered benzene (too bad it causes leukemia) and invented an early form of a Bunsen burner. (Apparently, Albert Einstein kept a picture of the ol' boy on the wall of his study. Score, Faraday!)

The two men were buddy-buddy for many years until Mike "went on to enhance Davy's work and in the end he became the more famous and influential scientist – to the extent that Davy is supposed to have claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery. However, Davy later accused Faraday of plagiarism, causing Faraday...to cease all research in electromagnetism until his mentor's death."

Man. Ain't that always the way? Boys will be boys, I suppose.