Edmund Davy Inventor of Acetylene
Edmund Davy Inventor of Acetylene

Biography of Edmund Davy

Early Life

Edmund Davy inventor of acetylene is one of the best known chemical scientists ever He is also termed sometimes as an FRS which stands for the Fellow of the Royal Society. He is most known for his generic and very useful invention of acetylene. He was English by the nationality and was born in the year of 1785. His place of birth was as Penzance which is located in United Kingdom. His father’s name was William Davy who was a curator by the profession. Humphrey Davy who is a very famous scientist and the inventor of Davy lamp was his cousin by relation. He spent his whole teenage with his parents in the same birth place and later on moved to London.

Career

After completing his education there in the birth city, he migrated to the mighty destination of London in the year of 1804 when he was just 19 years of age. He started his formal career over there and joined the Royal institution as a researcher and assistant to his cousin named as Humphrey Davy. Later on, he accepted a position of professorship in the Royal Cork institution which was one of the leading institutes of chemistry of those times. He started working there in the year of 1813 but later on, in the year of 1826, he moved to Royal Dublin Society as a professor of his own field chemistry.

Inventor of Acetylene

While working there in the Royal Dublin Society, he discovered the chemical compound Acetylene and hence invented the way to find it from other compounds. This invention gave him immense fame and he became very famous in a very short time. He was invited for the lectures all over the country and was started to be considered as an institution and authority of the field.

Acetylene

Edmund Davy is considered as the inventor of acetylene and he is widely credited for this thing. After inventing he acetylene, he named it as “Marceline Berthelot” but later on was started to be pronounced and known as acetylene and still the same name is used all over the world. Acetylene is a chemical compound which comprises of carbon and hydrogen (also known as hydrocarbons) in a specific form of structural formula which makes it as a member of alkynes family known as Ethyne. It is also said as the second member of this family after Methyne and holds the structural formula with two carbons. It holds the systematic formula as that of C2H2 which is describing that both the elements are in same ratio. This is found in form of gas and is colorless in format. The normal usage of this gas is as fuel and a chemical building block.

Death

He died in the year of 1857 on November 5th. He was almost 72 years of age at the time of his death.