imperious, and was "regardless of minor etiquette." Snobbish to aristocrats, arrogant to inferiors, "it is mortifying to think that this great man, captivated by the flatteries of the fashionable world, lost much of the winning simplicity of his early manner and his devotion to science."
Davy received every honour awarded to men of science, but he was refused the Order of the Bath, which he expected.
Of posthumous honours, the Royal Society awards a Davy medal; Dr Ludwig Mond has endowed a research laboratory (called the "Davy-Faraday Laboratory") at the Royal Institution; and there is a statue to his memory in Market Jew Street, Penzance.
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It was Count Rumford who was instrumental in bringing Davy to the Royal Institution; therefore a few words about him will not be out of place. Benjamin Thompson Rumford was born in America in 1753, and at the outbreak of the War of Independence he embraced the royalist cause. He was a commander of the King's American Dragoons; in 1784 he entered the Bavarian service, rose to be Minister of War, and was created Count of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1806 he married the widow of Lavoisier, but the marriage was a failure, and they separated in 1809.
Rumford was a celebrated physicist. He invented the
