A Man of Science and a Poet: Humphry Davy's Letters, Life, and Legacy

Through this Fellowship I will complete the final two volumes of The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy for Oxford University Press as well as engaging in other related activities.

Davy was the foremost 'Man of Science' of his day. He isolated more chemical elements than any individual has before or since. Between October and December 1815, Humphry Davy invented a miners' safety lamp that came to be known as the Davy Lamp. This invention saved countless lives when it was used in Britain and Europe and vastly improved industrial capability. He also had a fascinating life, rising up through the social ranks to become the President of the Royal Society from relatively humble origins and suffering the prejudice that accompanied this rise. His politics and religious beliefs also changed from radical to conservative as his career progressed. But, he was also a Poet: for the whole of his life he wrote poetry, much of which will be published for the first time in the Collected Letters edition. For these reasons, he is an excellent figure to illustrate the impact that society and culture has upon science. It becomes clear from Davy's letters that science is a part of culture; the kinds of experiments that he performs, the methods that he uses, and the relationship that his chemistry has to his poetry, demonstrate that science is influenced by culture, history, and politics.

Despite the fact that Davy is such an important figure, his letters are almost entirely unpublished. This Fellowship will allow me to edit and annotate the already transcribed letters of Volumes III and IV of the first scholarly edition, identifying who he wrote to, the progress of his chemical discoveries, and his views on poetry, among other things. This work would be disseminated and interpreted at three public events that would be delivered to different audiences. At the Wordsworth Trust, in Grasmere, I will follow a public talk on the Collected Letters with a workshop on the importance of letters in the past and now. At the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the partner of this project, I will give an evening talk in the very lecture theatre in which Davy himself lectured, specifically thinking about how Davy's position as a chemist and a poet can make us reconsider the relationship between science and literature in today's society. At the Woodhorn Museum in Ashington (formerly known as the Woodhorn Colliery Museum), I will give a third public talk, this time as part of the Northumberland History Fair. I will also collaborate with the educational team at Woodhorn to create a day workshop based on the findings of the letters, which also utilises the archive holdings and mining buildings at the museum. The team will deliver this workshop ten times across the autumn of 2016, offering it to local primary schools and eventually reaching 300 pupils.

After the first year of the Fellowship, which will mainly be spent annotating the letters, I will spend part of my time for six months creating and producing a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC). This will teach a huge, global audience about Davy, his letters, his life, and his legacy. The course will be filmed partly on location at the Royal Institution and will explore - through the example of Davy - the larger issues that this Fellowship addresses. Throughout the whole period of the Fellowship I will be working on developing my own capacities as a research leader, not least in the employment, encouragement, and supervision of a full-time Research Assistant, who - among other tasks - will write two detailed, academic articles on specific aspects of Davy's letters and what these reveal that is new.

The research undertaken during the period of this Fellowship will impact on a number of different groups and organisations:

1) Enhancing the research capacity, knowledge, and skills of third-sector organisations (and economic impact):

As is clear from the Project Partner's Letter of Support, the Royal Institution of Great Britain (Ri) stands to gain from this collaboration in a number of ways. The work of the Fellowship will serve to preserve and promote the Ri's archive collections and increase knowledge of the history of this important institution. The Fellowship will publicise the work of the Ri; it will attract more visitors to the building itself (for tours or events) and encourage people to visit the Ri's TV channel. The Fellowship develops an existing successful collaboration and continues to extend the Ri's research capacity beyond science into the field of literary studies.

The Wordsworth Trust and Woodhorn Museum will similarly benefit from the public events planned at their sites. The Woodhorn Museum events will enhance visitors' experience of the museum, while the Wordsworth Trust will be adding to and expanding an already established interest in letter writing in the early nineteenth century and in its holdings of manuscript letters. All three organisations struggle financially and will benefit economically from the increased footfall associated with these events.

2) Enhancing cultural enrichment and, thus, quality of life for local communities and the wider public, while also increasing public engagement with research and societal issues.

A number of different kinds of communities and publics will interact and engage with the research produced during this Fellowship. I will reach local and regional audiences (north-east for Woodhorn; north-west for the Wordsworth Trust); a metropolitan audience (at the Ri in London); and a global audience (with the MOOC). I will reach school children and their teachers with the Woodhorn events; an audience generally aged 50+ at the Wordsworth Trust; and an age-diverse audience at the Ri, which is made up of slightly more men than women, with a fair proportion working in or studying science, according to the Ri's Public Programmes report for September 2013 to August 2014. Lancaster University has found that MOOC participants tend to be what are known as 'leisure learners'. On a previous Lancaster University MOOC, over 70% of the participants were international and from all over the world. FutureLearn reports that current MOOC audiences are made up of nearly 60% women, with an even distribution of ages between 18 and 65. 24% of learners do not have degrees already; 49% of learners are working full time; and 56% of learners had not taken an online course before this one.

Davy is a significant figure to British national heritage (see Case for Support) and this Fellowship will increase knowledge of his legacy to science and society. Audiences will gain an enriched understanding of Britain's industrial past and of scientific achievement. They will also find their preconceptions of scientists challenged and potentially transformed: Davy wrote poetry throughout his life that has a vital and generative relationship to his chemistry. Learning about this will encourage people to rethink some of their ideas about the division of arts and sciences into 'two cultures' and persuade them of the importance of the arts and humanities. Beyond Davy, the Fellowship will engage people in dialogue about the relationships between the arts and science. This will ensure that the public has a role in shaping discussion about the future directions that research might take in this area. I hope that the people I meet and talk to in person, or reach through the school workshops or the MOOC, will feel enriched by the experience of learning about Davy, empowered to identify and question the various agenda of science today, and proud of their regional and/or national heritage.