The star of the lecture circuit at the time was Sir Humphry Davy, who plucked Faraday from obscurity to work as his laboratory assistant.

ECONOMIST: Science

The Age of Wonder details the work of people like Joseph Banks, Humphry Davy and William Herschel who transformed the way we view the world.

BBC: Prize for wonder of science past

The Davy safety lamp on which the sculpture is modelled was devised in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy after a group of Newcastle miners told him of the dangers they faced from methane gas.

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Such experiments were common topics of conversation in the Godwin household, where the philosopher William Godwin played host to scientific wizards such as Humphry Davy, who had used the voltaic pile to develop electrolysis and whose sensationally popular lectures proclaimed that science was poised to unleash powers previously unimagined, and perhaps even liberate the spark of life itself.

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