Electrochemical Bonding
Year of Discovery: 1806
What Is It? Molecular bonds between chemical elements are electrical in
nature.
Who Discovered It? Humphry Davy
Why Is This One of the 100 Greatest?
Davy discovered that the chemical bonds between individual atoms in a molecule are
electrical in nature. We now know that chemical bonds are created by the sharing or transfer
of electrically charged particles—electrons—between atoms. In 1800, the idea that chemistry somehow involved electricity was a radical discovery.
Davy’s discovery started the modern field of electrochemistry and redefined science’s
view of chemical reactions and how chemicals bond together. Finally, Davy used this new
concept to discover two new (and important) elements: sodium and potassium.
How Was It Discovered?
Humphry Davy was born in 1778 along the rugged coast of Cornwall, England. He received only minimal schooling and was mostly self-taught. As a young teenager, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary. But the early writings of famed French scientist
Antoine Lavoisier sparked his interest in science.
In 1798 Davy was offered a chance by wealthy amateur chemist Thomas Beddoes to
work in Bristol, England, at a new lab Beddoes built and funded. Davy was free to pursue
chemistry-related science whims. He experimented with gases in 1799, thinking that the
best way to test these colorless creations was to breathe them. He sniffed nitrous oxide
(N2O) and passed out, remembering nothing but feeling happy and powerful. After he reported its effect, the gas quickly became a popular party drug under the name “laughing
gas.” Davy used nitrous oxide for a wisdom tooth extraction and felt no pain. Even though
he reported this in an article, it was another 45 years before the medical profession finally
used nitrous oxide as its first anesthetic.
Davy also experimented with carbon dioxide. He breathed it and almost died from carbon dioxide poisoning. A born showman, movie-star handsome, and always fashionably
dressed, Davy delighted in staging grand demonstrations of each experiment and discovery
for thrilled audiences of public admirers.
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