Missing copy of Davy’s first book found at UCL

An extremely rare copy of the very first book written by Humphry Davy, one of the world's greatest scientists, at just 19 years of age, has been discovered in UCL's library collections. Essays on heat, light and the combinations of light was published in 1799, a youthful work that Davy was later in life embarrassed about having written. The found copy was presented to UCL in 1890 by Professor George Carey Foster, then Professor of Physics at UCL, but only came to light recently during cataloguing in UCL's Special Collections. A note on the flyleaf written by Foster says: 'This volume is rare; it was the first work of Davy, and four copies were printed, and he was exceedingly adverse to its being quoted or preserved, from the rash hypotheses brought forward in it." The discovered book was written two years after Davy had first read Antoine Lavoisier's Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, in which Lavoisier had presented a unified theory of chemistry, and contains Davy's own views on Lavoisier's theories. 'Reading Lavoisier was really a road to Damascus moment for Davy,' says Dr Andrea Sella, UCL Chemistry. 'He was thrilled by it but at the same time all kinds of things in it didn't make sense to him, and this inspired him to start doing experiments. ?This book also sees the start of Davy writing a series of memoirs, in which he both agrees with and criticises Lavoisier, and starts to set out his own ideas.