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

通过这项奖学金，我将为牛津大学出版社完成《汉弗莱·戴维爵士书信集》的最后两卷，并参与其他相关活动。戴维是他那个时代最重要的“科学人”。他分离出的化学元素比之前和之后的任何人都多。在1815年10月到12月之间，汉弗莱·戴维发明了一种矿工安全灯，后来被称为戴维灯。这项发明在英国和欧洲使用时挽救了无数人的生命，并极大地提高了工业能力。他的一生也很精彩，从相对卑微的出身，通过社会阶层上升到皇家学会主席，并遭受了随之而来的偏见。随着事业的发展，他的政治和宗教信仰也从激进转变为保守。但是，他也是一位诗人：他一生都在写诗，其中大部分将首次发表在《书信集》中。由于这些原因，他是一个很好的例子来说明社会和文化对科学的影响。从戴维的信中可以清楚地看出，科学是文化的一部分；他所做的各种实验，他所使用的方法，以及他的化学与诗歌的关系，都表明科学受到文化、历史和政治的影响。尽管戴维是一个如此重要的人物，但他的信件几乎完全没有发表过。这个奖学金将允许我编辑和注释第一版学术版的第三卷和第四卷已经转录的信件，确定他写信给谁，他的化学发现的进展，以及他对诗歌的看法，以及其他事情。这项工作将在三个面向不同受众的公共活动中进行传播和解释。在格拉斯米尔的华兹华斯信托基金会（Wordsworth Trust），我将在一个关于《书信选集》的公开演讲之后，举办一个关于信件在过去和现在的重要性的研讨会。在英国皇家学会，这个项目的合作伙伴，我将在大卫自己演讲的演讲厅做一个晚上的演讲，特别思考大卫作为化学家和诗人的地位如何使我们重新考虑当今社会科学与文学之间的关系。在华盛顿的伍德霍恩博物馆（以前称为伍德霍恩煤矿博物馆），我将作第三次公开演讲，这一次是作为诺森伯兰郡历史博览会的一部分。我还将与Woodhorn的教育团队合作，根据信件的发现创建一个为期一天的研讨会，该研讨会也利用了博物馆的档案馆藏和采矿建筑。该团队将在2016年秋季举办10次研讨会，将其提供给当地的小学，最终将惠及300名学生。在第一年的学习结束后，我将主要花在批注信件上，然后我将花六个月的时间来创建和制作一门大规模在线开放课程（MOOC）。这将向全球广大观众介绍戴维，他的信件，他的生活和他的遗产。该课程部分将在皇家学院拍摄，并将通过戴维的例子探讨该奖学金所解决的更大问题。在整个奖学金期间，我将努力发展自己作为研究领导者的能力，尤其是在雇佣、鼓励和监督一位全职研究助理方面，他的任务之一是写两篇详细的学术文章，讨论戴维信件的具体方面，以及这些信件揭示了什么是新的。

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.