A project geared towards shedding new light on Sir Humphry Davy, a significant and famous figure in the scientific and literary culture of the early nineteenth century, has been launched by Lancaster University and the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

Researchers in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing would like volunteers to help them to transcribe and digitally preserve five of Davy’s manuscript notebooks, dating from 1795 to 1805.

Professor Sharon Ruston and Dr Andrew Lacey from Lancaster University launched the ‘Davy Notebooks Project’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Council, online in mid-July. The project’s collaborating partner is the Royal Institution, an organisation devoted to scientific education and research.

The Davy Notebooks Project follows on from the Davy Letters Project, which has prepared more than 1200 Davy letters for publication. ‘The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy’ will be published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

Davy’s many and varied scientific accomplishments included conducting pioneering research into the physiological effects of nitrous oxide (often called ‘laughing gas’).

He isolated seven chemical elements (magnesium, calcium, potassium, sodium, strontium, barium, and boron) and established the elemental status of chlorine and iodine.

He is also famous for inventing a miners’ safety lamp and he developed the electrochemical protection of the copper sheeting of Royal Navy vessels.

But Davy (1778-1829) was also a poet, moving in the same literary circles as Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth.

And, to date, only a very small proportion of Davy’s manuscript notebooks have been transcribed and published.

“Davy’s notebooks are especially fascinating because they are generically mixed, containing records of his thoughts, scientific experiments, poetry, geological observations, travel accounts, and personal philosophy,” said Professor Ruston.

“Together, we will learn more about Davy, his work, and the relationship between poetry and science.”

The Davy Notebooks Project has just launched on Zooniverse (https://www.zooniverse.org), the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. The transcriptions produced with the help of the volunteers will later be published, and made freely available to all, on a custom-built website.

Joining the project is easy: simply create a Zooniverse account, read the introductory materials, and begin transcribing.

Volunteers can transcribe as much or as little as they like – even just a page or two.

If you’re interested and would like to take part, you can send any questions to humphrydavyzooniverse@gmail.com, or sign up to the project and post your questions on the project’s Talk boards.

Project updates will be posted to the project Twitter page: https://twitter.com/davynotebooks