Born, 11 October 1886; fourth son of Colonel Sir Alfred Mordaunt Egerton, KCVO, and the Hon Mary Georgina Ormsby-Gore, eldest daughter of the 2nd Baron Harlech; known from childhood as Jack; attended Eton College, from 1900; his science master was Thomas Cunningham Porter and while at the school Egerton was encouraged to found the Eton College Scientific Society; continued his studies at University College, London, from 1904; read Chemistry under Sir William Ramsey and graduated with first class honours, 1908; his research field was Thermodynamics; worked under Professor Ganz at Nancy University, 1909; Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, 1909-1913; worked with W H Nernst in Berlin, 1913; Department of Explosives Supply, Ministry of Munitions, 1914-1918; Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, 1918-1935; appointed Reader in Thermodynamics, Oxford University, 1923; elected Fellow of The Royal Society, 1926; served on Council of The Royal Society, 1931-1933; Chair of Chemical Technology, Department of Chemical Technology and Applied Physical Chemistry, Imperial College, 1936-1952; Physical Secretary of The Royal Society, 1938-1948; research on fuel, fire-raising and fire protection, 1939-1945; member of War Cabinet Scientific Advisory Committee; chairman of the Fuel and Propulsion Committee of the Admiralty; ex-officio member of committees connected with The Royal Society; travelled to the USA to reorganise the work of the British Central Scientific Office and to improve scientific liaison between London and Washington, 1942; knighted, 1943; Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Ministry of Fuel and Power, 1948; closely involved in the organization of the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference, London, 1948; travelled abroad, with a special interest in India, which he visited, 1948, 1954; appointed chairman of a committee to review the working and development of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Director, Salters Institute of Industrial Chemistry, 1949-1959; Emeritus Professor of Chemical Technology, University of London, 1953-1959; Chairman, Commonwealth Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, India, 1954; Adviser to the Tobacco Manufacturers' Standing Committee, 1956; undertook a tour of the Middle East (Beirut, Baghdad and Teheran), 1957; received various Fellowships, honours and awards; Fellow of University College, London, Imperial College and City and Guilds College; honorary degrees from Birmingham, Cairo, Nancy and Helsinki; Honorary President of Combustion Institute; Honorary Editor of Fuel and also of Combustion and Flame; British Coal Utilization Research Associations: Coal Science Lecturer, 1952; Institution of Mechanical Engineers: George Stephenson Research Prize, Herbert Akroyd Stuart Prize, and Thomas Hawkesley Lecturer for 1940; Institution of Civil Engineers: the Telford Premium, 1942; The Royal Society: Rumford Medal, 1946; Institution of Chemical Engineers: Hinchley Memorial Medal, 1954; Institute of Fuel: Melchett Medal, 1956; Combustion Institute: Egerton Medal, 1958; married the Hon Ruth Cripps, 1912; adopted Francis, the posthumous younger son of Egerton's brother Louis who had been killed in the First World War; a keen watercolourist, with an exhibition of his paintings held at the Chenil Galleries, 1957; died in France, in the Alpes-Maritimes, 7 September 1959. Publications: The 1939 Callendar Steam Tables with G S Callendar (E Arnold & Co, London, 1939); Editor of Fuel; lectures and papers largely relating to combustion and utilization of energy.
Brown was born in Liverpool on 9 February 1903, son of George William Arthur Brown, schoolmaster in Warrington, and Helen Wharram. He attended Boteler Grammar School in Warrington, and entered the University of Manchester on a scholarship to study medicine, where A V Hill, the Nobel prize winner, was his professor of physiology. He took an honours B.Sc. in physiology in 1924, then won the Platt Physiological Scholarship which enabled him to do research with B A McSwiney, earning an M.Sc. (1925). He qualified in Medicine in 1928 (MB, Ch.B Manch.), winning the Bradley Prize and medal for operative surgery. He joined McSwiney as lecturer in physiology at Leeds University in 1928, taking six months' leave to work in Sir C S Sherrington's laboratory at Oxford, and collaborating with J C Eccles. In 1934 Sir Henry Dale offered, and Brown accepted, a post at the National Institute for Medical Research in Hampstead, where he worked with (Sir) John Gaddum and W S Feldberg establishing the cholinergic theory of chemical transmission. In 1942 the Royal Naval Personnel Research Committee was established, and he became involved very successfully with diving and underwater operations, remaining Secretary to the RNPRC until 1949, and then its chairman until 1969. In 1949 he accepted the Jodrell Chair of Physiology at University College London, where he strenghthened the physiology and biophysics departments under (Sir) Bernard Katz and worked with J S Gillespie on adrenergic transmission. He served on various Royal Society committees, becoming Biological Secretary, 1955-1963. In 1960 he accepted the Waynflete chair of physiology in Oxford, becoming a Fellow of Magdalen. He also became a member of the Franks Commission of Inquiry into the working of Oxford University. In 1967 he resigned his chair to be elected Principal of Hertford College Oxford, although he continued with his research group in the pharmacology department. He was responsible for inaugurating the College's major apeal, negotiated two senior research fellowships, and dealt lightly with student restiveness. He married in 1930 Jane Rosamond, daughter of Charles Herbert Lees, FRS, Professor of Physics in the University of London and Vice-Principal of Queen Mary College, and had one daughter and three sons.
The images of the Fellows of the Royal Society have been collected since the foundation of the Society in 1660.
Henry Maull formed four companies: Maull and Polyblank 1856-1865; Maull, Henry and Co 1866-1872; Maull and Co 1873-1878; Maull and Fox 1879-1908. His studios specialised in portraits of noted individuals. The studios were based in 62 Cheapside E.C, 187A Piccadilly W, 55 Gracechurch Street and Tavistock House, Fulham Road S W.
The Journal Book Copy was transcribed retrospectively in the early eighteenth century, and then regularly to the early nineteenth century, for the purpose of greater security.
Begins with the very first meeting of the newly formed Society, held in Gresham College on 28 November 1660 following a lecture by Christopher Wren. A copy of the Journal Book Original was made retrospectively in the early eighteenth century, and then regularly to the early nineteenth century for the purposes of greater security. In 1988 at the Special General Meeting of 17 November 1988 the Council approved a proposal, expressed in detail in an Appendix , to formally amend Statute 60, to separate the business meetings of the Society from the scientific lectures and meetings. The scientific discussions and lectures open to Fellows alone had been replaced with a programme of lectures and meetings open to all, with ordinary meetings of Fellows having become brief formal meetings for Statutory business.
Decisions on the venues and dates of lectures , which broke the tradition that lectures be tied to Ordinary meetings, had been made by Council on 16 June 1988, minute 22.
John Henry Gaddum was born on 31 March 1900 in Hale, Cheshire, the eldest of 6 children. His father was a silk importer who did much charitable work and who had a great influence on his son. He was educated at Miss Wallace's day school in Bowdon, Cheshire, then Moorland House School, Heswall, Cheshire, and from 1913 at Rugby School. He was encouraged to take up science by F A Meyer who later became headmaster of Bedales. He won two leaving exhibitions - one general, one for mathematics. In 1919 he went to Trinity College Cambridge on an entrance scholarship for mathematics, and read medicine. He won a senior scholarship at Trinity in 1922 and obtained second class honours in the Science Tripos (Part II) in Physiology. In 1922 he became a medical student at University College Hospital, London. In 1925 he applied for and won a post at the Wellcome Research Laboratories under J W Trevan, writing his first paper on the quantitative aspects of drug antagonism. In 1927 he went to work for Sir Henry Dale at the National Institute for Medical Research in Hampstead, where he stayed for six years, then accepted the Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Cairo in 1934. In 1935 he was appointed Professor of Pharmacology at University College London, and in 1938 he took the Chair of Pharmacology at the College of the Pharmaceutical Society, London. After the war broke out, he worked at the Chemical Defence Research Station, Porton Down, then later was for a short time in the Army as Temporary Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1942 he accepted the Chair of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh, where he was happy and built up an outstanding research department which attracted many scientists from abroad. Extra-mural activities became more time-consuming and in 1958 he was invited to become the Director of the Institute of Animal Physiology in Babraham, Cambridge, by the Agricultural Research Council. He enjoyed learning new things, so accepted the post and staffed the Institute with the finest physiologists, with the result it became one of the great international centres for research in physiology and pharmacology. A year before his death he was knighted and awarded an honorary LL.D, Edinburgh. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1929 he married Iris Mary Harmer, M.B., B.Chir., M.R.C.P., daughter of Sir Sidney Harmer, FRS, a zoologist, and Laura Russell.
Sir James Hopwood Jeans was born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, on 11 September 1877, and moved to London in 1880. A precocious child, he had a passion for clocks, writing a booklet about them at the age of nine. He attended Merchant Taylor's School from 1890-1896, then entered Trinity College where he was second wrangler on the mathematical tripos in 1898. While recovering from a tubercular infection of the joints, he took a first class on part two of the tripos in 1900 and was awarded a Smith's Prize. In 1901 he was elected a fellow of Trinity College, obtaining his MA in 1903. In 1904 he published his first treatise Dynamical Theory of Gases which became a standard textbook. Two further textbooks followed while he was professor of applied mathematics at Princeton University from 1906-1909. From 1910-1912 he was Stokes lecturer in applied mathematics at Cambridge. His Report on Radiation and the Quantum Theory in 1914 helped spread acceptance of quantum theory. Until this time he had been interested in molecular physics; then he turned his attention to astronomy, working on the equilibrium of rotating masses, culminating in his Adams Prize Essay Problems of Cosmogony and Stellar Dynamics. He continued to work on astrophysical problems, producing Astronomy and Cosmogony in 1928. From 1928, he occupied himself with the popularization of science, beginning with a series of lectures which served as a source for The Universe Around Us in 1929, followed by other publications in his fluent and stimulating style, though his final books Physics and Philosophy in 1943 and The Growth of Physical Science in 1947 were more historical and restrained. In 1907 he married Charlotte Tiffany Mitchell, an American from a wealthy family, by whom he had one daughter. Charlotte died in 1934, and he subsequently married Suzanne Hock, a concert organist. They had three children. Jeans died on 16 September 1946 of coronary thrombosis. He was awarded the Order of Merit, and was Secretary of the Royal Society, 1919-1929, and Vice President, 1938-1940.
This type of record has been solicited by the Royal Society during several periods of its history. In 1723 James Jurin appealed for observations via the 'Philosophical Transactions' and from 1725 instruments were sent to foreign observers to assist in this process. The resulting papers were abstracted in the 'Philosophical Transactions' by William Derham and others, but are preserved entire in this series. The Royal Society kept its own observations for the period 1774-1843 from which date the duties were transferred to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. In the mid 19th century further impetus was given to such information gathering by the Meteorological Committee, and many of the manuscripts date from this time.
The origins of the Royal Society lie in an "invisible college" of natural philosophers who began meeting in the mid-1640s to discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon. Its official foundation date is 28 November 1660, when 12 of them met at Gresham College after a lecture by Christopher Wren, the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and decided to found 'a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning'. This group included Wren himself, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, Sir Robert Moray, and William, Viscount Brouncker. The Society was to meet weekly to witness experiments and discuss what we would now call scientific topics. The first Curator of Experiments was Robert Hooke. It was Moray who first told the King, Charles II, of this venture and secured his approval and encouragement. The Royal Society first appears in print in 1661, and in the second Royal Charter of 1663 the Society is referred to as 'The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge'. The Society found accommodation at Gresham College and rapidly began to acquire a library (the first book was presented in 1661) and a repository or museum of specimens of scientific interest. After the Fire of 1666 it moved for some years to Arundel House, London home of the Dukes of Norfolk. It was not until 1710, under the Presidency of Isaac Newton, that the Society acquired its own home, two houses in Crane Court, off the Strand. In 1662 the Society was permitted by Royal Charter to publish and the first two books it produced were John Evelyn's Sylva and Micrographia by Robert Hooke. In 1665, the first issue of Philosophical Transactions was edited by Henry Oldenburg, the Society's Secretary. The Society took over publication some years later and Philosophical Transactions is now the oldest scientific journal in continuous publication. From the beginning, Fellows of the Society had to be elected, although the criteria for election were vague and the vast majority of the Fellowship were not professional scientists. In 1731 a new rule established that each candidate for election had to be proposed in writing and this written certificate signed by those who supported his candidature. These certificates survive and give a glimpse of both the reasons why Fellows were elected and the contacts between Fellows. The Society moved again in 1780 to premises at Somerset House provided by the Crown, an arrangement made by Sir Joseph Banks who had become President in 1778 and was to remain so until his death in 1820. Banks was in favour of maintaining a mixture among the Fellowship of working scientists and wealthy amateurs who might become their patrons. This view grew less popular in the first half of the 19th century and in 1847 the Society decided that in future Fellows would be elected solely on the merit of their scientific work. This new professional approach meant that the Society was no longer just a learned society but also de facto an academy of scientists. The Government recognised this in 1850 by giving a grant to the Society of £1,000 to assist scientists in their research and to buy equipment. Therefore a Government Grant system was established and a close relationship began, which nonetheless still allowed the Society to maintain its autonomy, essential for scientific research. In 1857 the Society moved once more, to Burlington House in Piccadilly, with its staff of two. The Royal Society Building Over the next century the work and staff of the Society grew rapidly and soon outgrew this site. Therefore in 1967 the Society moved again to its present location on Carlton House Terrace with a staff which has now grown to over 120, all working to further the Royal Society's roles as independent scientific academy, learned society and funding body .
Marcello Malpighi was born in Crevalcore, Bologna, of Marcantonio Malpighi and Maria Cremonini. He entered the University of Bologna in 1646, where his tutor, the peripatetic philosopher Francesco Natali, suggested he study medicine. He graduated as doctor of philosphy and medicine in 1653, and from 1656 accepted the chair of theoretical medicine at Pisa, where his stay was fundamental to the formation of his science. He was influenced by Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, then Professor of Mathematics at Pisa, through whom he entered the orbit of the school of Galileo. In 1659 he returned to Bologna, where with Carlo Fracassati he continued to conduct dissections and vivisections, in the course of which he used the microscope to make fundamental discoveries about the lungs. These he communicated to Borelli. His observations not only identified a structure for the pulmonary parenchyma, but also confirmed the theory of the circulation of the blood and ensured the theory's acceptance. In 1662 he returned to Messina where he held the chair of medicine, and enthusiatically continued his researches on fundamental structures, publishing his findings in treatises relating to neurology, adenology, and hematology. He established the capillary circulation and a mechanism to explain hematosis; he defined and systematized a nervous mechanism which included a highly accute sensory receptors; and performed an analysis of the blood, discovering the red corpuscles. He studied aberrations to cast light on normal organisms, and studied simple animals to understand more complex ones. He applied his methodological formulation in his work on the silkworm in 1669, and in the later embryological and botanical works edited by the Royal Society. In 1666 he went back to Bologna, and in 1667 he agreed to undertake scientific correspondence with the Royal Society of London, and the Society subsequently supervised the printing of all his later works. His study of plants, the Anatome Planatarum, appeared in London in two parts, in 1675 and 1679, and with Nathaniel Gre earned him acclaim as the founder of the microscopic study of plant anatomy. He was Chief Physician to Pope Innocent XII, 1691-1694. In his work on medical anatomy he shaped the work of at least two generations, Albertini and Valsalva being his pupils, and their pupil Mortgagni continuing Malpighi's work. He also made considerable contributions to vegetable pathology, as in plant galls, and wrote an important methodological work supporting rational medicine against the empiricists.
Born in Dublin in 1788, Sabine was a graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He retained his commission, eventually reaching the rank of General - but started scientific work at the end of the Napoleonic wars. He was recommended by the Royal Society to accompany John Ross on an expedition to seek the Northwest Passage in 1818, was with William Edward Parry on his 1819-1820 Arctic expedition, and on a pendulum expedition in 1821-1822 around the Atlantic to determine the true figure of the earth. He was most interested in terrestrial magnetism, in 1826 working with Babbage on the British Isles; in the 1830's he, Humphrey Lloyd, James Clark Ross and others completed the magnetic survey of the British Isles, which he repeated in 1858-1861. His career was distinguished by his successful promotion and administration of a world-wide effort to gather terrestrial magnetism observations, believing in the existence of two magnetic poles and that terrestrial magnetism was essentially the same as atmospheric phenomena. He played a key role both in the dispatching of a British expedition to the southern hemisphere in 1839 to establish a network of magnetic and meteorological observatories, and in its consequencies, motivated by intellectual curiosity and nationalistic zeal. Also, he and Sir John Herschel were in complete agreement on the desirability of seizing this opportunity to advance meteorology. Sabine took over from Lloyd the processing of the data, and between 1841-1861 he maintained a staff at Woolwich for data reduction. He also persuaded the British Association to acquire the King's Observatory at Kew to be the basic geophysical observatory for the Empire, providing standard data and equipment for colonial observations, until in 1871 it was transferred to the Royal Society. Sabine believed that data was not the end in itself, but a preliminary to theory. He was particularly active in the British Association and the Royal Society, shifting programmes from one to the other to gain his objectives, such as the Kew Observatory. He was distressed by the disputes over reforming the Royal Society, and with Grove played a leading reform role which answered the complaints of Davy and Babbage about the election of Fellows. However, he failed to move with the scientific times, in 1863 refusing the demand by younger naturalists for awarding the Copley Medal to Darwin in favour of Adam Sedgwick. Accused by Tyndall of neglecting natural history, he resigned the presidency of the Royal Society in 1871.
The Royal Observatory was founded by Charles II in 1675. Charles II appointed John Flamsteed as his first Astronomer Royal in March 1675. The Observatory was built to improve navigation at sea and 'find the so-much desired longitude of places'. This was inseparable from the accurate measurement of time, for which the Observatory became generally famous in the 19th century. The Royal Observatory is also the source of the Prime Meridian of the world, Longitude 0° 0' 0''. The Prime Meridian is defined by the position of the large 'Transit Circle' telescope in the Observatory's Meridian Building. This was built by Sir George Biddell Airy, the 7th Astronomer Royal, in 1850. The cross-hairs in the eyepiece of the Transit Circle precisely define Longitude 0º for the world. Since the late 19th century, the Prime Meridian at Greenwich has served as the co-ordinate base for the calculation of Greenwich Mean Time. The Greenwich Meridian was chosen to be the Prime Meridian of the World in 1884. In 1960, shortly after the transfer of the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) to Herstmonceux (and later Cambridge), Flamsteed House was transferred to the National Maritime Museum's care and over the next seven years the remaining buildings on the site were also transferred and restored for Museum use. Following the closure of the RGO at Cambridge in October 1998, the site is now again known as the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
Born, 1794; educated, Edinburgh University; commissioned in the Prince of Wales's Edinburgh volunteers, 1810; went to Barbados, 1811; appointed ensign in the York light infantry, a corps which served in the West Indies, 1813; promoted lieutenant, 1815; exchanged into the 2nd West India regiment in Jamaica; posted to Sierra Leone, 1820; captain to the Royal African Colonial Corps, 1822; two successive missions to Forecariah in the coastal country (later Guinea) north of Sierra Leone; transferred to the Gold Coast, 1823; official mission to seek the mouth of the Niger, 1824; died on the mission in 1826.
Robins was born in 1707 in Bath, showing his mathematical ability at an early age. He came to London, teaching himself modern languages and the higher mathematics to prepare himself for teaching. Without help he demonstrated Newton's 'Treatise of Quadratures', published in the Philosophical Transactions, and in 1728 published a masterly confutation of a dissertation by Jean Bernouilli on the laws of motion in bodies impinging on one another. Such fame brought him many students, and he spent some years teaching pure and applied mathematics, until he became bored and became an engineer, devoting himself to making mills, bridges, harbours and making rivers navigable. More importantly, he also studied gunnery and fortification, helped in this by his friend William Ockenden. In 1739 he wrote a number of able political pamphlets in the tory interest, which brought him to political notice, and he was appointed secretary of the committee nominated by the House of Commons to examine and report on the past conduct of Walpole. In 1741 he was unsuccessful in being appointed professor of fortification at the Royal Military Academy established at Woolwich, but in 1742 he published his best known work New Principles of Gunnery which he had begun in support of his candidacy. It was translated into German by Euler, whose critical commentary on it was translated into English, and published by the order of the Board of Ordnance with remarks by Hugh Brown of the Tower of London. The French also translated the 'New Principle' for the Academy of Science in Paris in 1751. He invented the ballistic pendulum, a device for measuring the velocity of a projectile, and communicated to the Royal Society on this and other gunnery topics, including exhibiting various experiments. In 1747 he was awarded the Copley medal. Robins' friend and patron Lord Anson, on his return from the voyage around the world in the 'Centurion', entrusted him with the task of revising his account of the voyage from the journals kept by his chaplain, Richard Walter. This led to a dispute between Robins and Walter as to who actually wrote the published work, though it seems probable it was Robins who revised and edited the work, and was especially entrusted with the second volume containing the nautical observations, which he took to India and could not be found after his death. Lord Anson enabled Robins to continue his experiments in gunnery, whose results were published in the Philosophical Transactions. In 1749 he accepted the post of engineer-general to repair the forts of the East India Company, to Lord Anson's regret, and took with him a complete set of astronomical instruments, as well as instruments for making observations and experiments. On his arrival at Madras in 1750 he designed projects for Fort St. David and the defence of Madras. Following a fever, he died at Fort St. David. His executor, Thomas Lewis, entrusted Dr James Wilson with the publication of his works, which he did in 1761, the publication becoming a text book.
Boyle was born on 25 January 1627 at Lismore, Munster, seventh son of the notorious Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, thereby having high status and considerable wealth. His education began at home, then continued at Eton and with foreign travel from 1639. He visited France, Geneva - where he suffered a conversion experience which was to have a profound effect on him - and Italy, where he discovered the writings of Galileo. He returned to England in 1644, taking up residence at the family manor of Stalbridge, Dorset, from 1645. He visited Ireland in 1652-1653, then by 1656 moved to Oxford where he joined the circle of natural philosophers there which formed the liveliest centre of English science at that time. After the Restoration in 1660, many of them moved to London, where the Royal Society was founded (with Boyle among its founding Fellows), although Boyle did not move there until 1668, sharing a house in Pall Mall with his sister Katherine, Lady Ranelagh, until they both died in 1691. In the 1640's he became preoccupied with themes which were to continue throughout his life - vindication of an approved understanding of nature, in its own right as well as its utilitarian advantages; insistence on the importance of experiment in pursuing this aim, and the advocacy of spirituality. To these ends he became involved with other like-minded individuals known as the 'Invisible College', and subsequently the circle of intellectuals surrounding the Prussian emigré, Samuel Hartlib. He devoted his life to extensive and systematic experimentation, and to writing. His major scientific work on pneumatics, 'New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Air and its Effects', used the air pump as the key piece of equipment used to explore the physical properties of air, vindicated the possibility of a vacuum, illustrated the extent to which life depended on air, and proved that the volume of air varies inversely with its pressure (Boyle's Law). 1661 saw the publication of the 'Sceptical Chemist' and 'Certain Physiological Essays', the beginning of a series where he sought to vindicate a mechanistic theory of matter and to remodel chemistry along new lines, and where he crucially vindicated an experimental approach. In the 1670's his publications continued the previous themes, but also included theology. In the 1680's, his interest shifted to medical matters, such as 'Memoirs for the Natural History of Human Blood' (1684), or the collections of recipes in his 'Medicinal Experiments' (1688-1694). At the same time, he continued his work as a Christian apologist, his 'The Christian Virtuoso' appearing in 1690. His concern about the theological implications of the new philosophy can be seen in 'Discourse of Things above Reason' (1681) and 'Disquisition about the Final Causes of Things' (1688). On his death in 1691 he endowed a Lectureship to expound the Christian message. His significance to the development of natural philosphy was recognised in his lifetime, and his influence was particularly important for Isaac Newton, the leading figure in the following generation, whose work is seen as the culmination of the scientific achievement of seventeenth-century England.
The origins of the Royal Society lie in an "invisible college" of natural philosophers who began meeting in the mid-1640s to discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon. Its official foundation date is 28 November 1660, when 12 of them met at Gresham College after a lecture by Christopher Wren, the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and decided to found 'a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning'. This group included Wren himself, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, Sir Robert Moray, and William, Viscount Brouncker. The Society was to meet weekly to witness experiments and discuss what we would now call scientific topics. The first Curator of Experiments was Robert Hooke. It was Moray who first told the King, Charles II, of this venture and secured his approval and encouragement. At first apparently nameless, the name The Royal Society first appears in print in 1661, and in the second Royal Charter of 1663 the Society is referred to as 'The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge'. The Society found accommodation at Gresham College and rapidly began to acquire a library (the first book was presented in 1661) and a repository or museum of specimens of scientific interest. After the Fire of 1666 it moved for some years to Arundel House, London home of the Dukes of Norfolk. It was not until 1710, under the Presidency of Isaac Newton, that the Society acquired its own home, two houses in Crane Court, off the Strand. In 1662 the Society was permitted by Royal Charter to publish and the first two books it produced were John Evelyn's Sylva and Micrographia by Robert Hooke. In 1665, the first issue of Philosophical Transactions was edited by Henry Oldenburg, the Society's Secretary. The Society took over publication some years later and Philosophical Transactions is now the oldest scientific journal in continuous publication. From the beginning, Fellows of the Society had to be elected, although the criteria for election were vague and the vast majority of the Fellowship were not professional scientists. In 1731 a new rule established that each candidate for election had to be proposed in writing and this written certificate signed by those who supported his candidature. These certificates survive and give a glimpse of both the reasons why Fellows were elected and the contacts between Fellows. The Society moved again in 1780 to premises at Somerset House provided by the Crown, an arrangement made by Sir Joseph Banks who had become President in 1778 and was to remain so until his death in 1820. Banks was in favour of maintaining a mixture among the Fellowship of working scientists and wealthy amateurs who might become their patrons. This view grew less popular in the first half of the 19th century and in 1847 the Society decided that in future Fellows would be elected solely on the merit of their scientific work. This new professional approach meant that the Society was no longer just a learned society but also de facto an academy of scientists. The Government recognised this in 1850 by giving a grant to the Society of £1,000 to assist scientists in their research and to buy equipment. Therefore a Government Grant system was established and a close relationship began, which nonetheless still allowed the Society to maintain its autonomy, essential for scientific research. In 1857 the Society moved once more, to Burlington House in Piccadilly, with its staff of two. Over the next century the work and staff of the Society grew rapidly and soon outgrew this site. Therefore in 1967 the Society moved again to its present location on Carlton House Terrace with a staff which has now grown to over 120, all working to further the Royal Society's roles as independent scientific academy, learned society and funding body.
Born, 1819; Assistant in the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope (1835-1845), cooperated with Sir Thomas Maclear in the extension of Lacaille's arc; produced oldest known calotypes of people and scenes in Southern Africa with the help of John Herschel; Astronomer Royal for Scotland and Regius Professor of Astronomy, University of Edinburgh (1845-1888), introduced time service for Edinburgh with time ball on the Nelson monument and later a time gun fired from Edinburgh Castle (1861); resigned Fellowship on 7 February 1874 on the Society denying him the reading of his paper on the interpretation of the design of the Great Pyramid, published "The Great Pyramid and the Royal Society"; Became obsessed with the metre - he believed the decimal system was foreign, French, and atheist. Claimed if the pyramids were measured very accurately, it was possible to tell that they were based on the British yard, given by God and built by the Hebrews. Led expeditions to Egypt to measure them accurately to prove this. Use of the yard in the Pyramids proved there were common values between the founders of Egypt and the Anglo-Saxons, and so helped to justify the Conquest of Egypt in 1881-2; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1857; died, 1900.
The 1856 expedition to the rugged volcanic mountain of Tenerife in the Canary Islands was an accomplishment which transformed the relatively unknown son of a famous admiral into an international scientific figure. It was also the focus of important and extensive activity in photographic publishing. It was this trip to Teneriffe which gave Smyth his entry into the elite scientific community. It also marked a turning point regarding his use of photography, having been certainly almost the first to experiment with calotypes at the Cape of Good Hope, and received his instruction from Talbot, Herschel and Hunt. The major donation for the expedition came from Robert Stephenson, who had read Smyth's 1855 'Royal Observatory of Edinburgh Report' and offered Smyth passage to Tenerife aboard his iron hulled yacht, the 'Titania', handing it to him for his exclusive use for the expedition in 1856, which departed from Cowes on 24 June. Santa Cruz was reached on 8 July.
Born in Hampshire, England; physician; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1734; died, 1759.
William Dines was born on 5 August 1855, son of George Dines, inventor of a hygrometer and an active Fellow of the Meteorological Society. Never robust, he was the only son to survive childhood. He attended Woodcote House School in Windlesham. He learned engineering as a pupil at the Nine Elm Works of the South Western Railway, and after completing his apprenticeship went to Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, taking his BA degree in 1881 as twentieth wrangler. In 1882 he remained at Cambridge as a mathematical coach. He continued to teach mathematics, first as assistant to an army coach, and then in correspondence classes, but subsequently his meteorological work absorbed all his time. The Tay Bridge disaster of 28 December 1879, when a train crossing the bridge was carried away with the bridge into the river by a squall of wind, claimed attention of both meterologists and engineers to decide what allowance should be made for wind force on engineers' structures. Dines became the most active member of a Wind-Force Committee appointed by the Meteorological Society in 1886, revising the equation for wind-force from three 'significant figures' with a tolerance for 40 per cent to a single figure with very little error. He also designed the pressure tube anemograph for measuring wind velocity, including a device for recording the direction as well as velocity, hence providing a record of wind indispensable for the study of dynamical meterology. In his investigation of the structure of the upper air, Dines was equally successful, being the prime mover in establishing a committee for the investigation of the characteristics of the free atmosphere by the Royal Meteorological Society and the British Association in 1901. Dines began with diamond shaped kites of his own design at Oxshott, and moved to the Chiltern Hills near Watlington. Here he developed the use of sounding balloons, maintaining the investigation with kites at the same time. He was helped by his assistant H W Baker, and other stations were set up by C J P Cave of Ditcham Park, Dr G C Simpson at the experimental station at Glossop Moor in Derbyshire, S H R Salmon with a kite station at Brighton, Captain C H Ley RE with sounding balloons at Ross in Herefordshire and subsequently at Bird Hill, Limerick. Later Mungret College in Limerick became a regular station for work in the upper air. By 1913 the scientific value of the use of sounding-balloons had been recognised, and in 1914 Dines acquired the property at Benson (Wallingford, Berkshire) with the assent of the Meteorological Office. During the war the various centres of meteorological activity co-operated through the Meteorological Sub-Committee of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The work at Benson was significant both in experimental work and in co-ordinating and discussing results. After the war L F Richardson joined Dines, and they worked on investigating solar radiation. In 1922 Dines resigned the official charge of the observatory, his son L H G Dines becoming Assistant Superintendent to take charge of the official work, until in 1923 it was transferred to Kew Observatory. His main efforts of investigation were wind-measurement, investigation of the upper air, and solar and terrestrial radiation; but he was equally at home with the design of instruments, co-ordination and discussion of results, and consideration of current theory. He died in 1927.
Sowerby trained as an artist and studied at the Royal Academy of Arts. He was best known for his illustrations to English Botany: or Coloured Figures of British Plants, With Their Essential Characters, Synonyms, and Places of Growth (1790-1814). This subsequently became known as 'Sowerby's Botany', although the text was supplied by James Edward Smith, whose name was at first withheld at his own request. His accurate descriptions and Sowerby's skilful drawings, beautifully coloured, made it a highly esteemed work which was frequently re-issued. Sowerby then published British Mineralogy in parts beginning in 1802, and his more important Mineral Conchology of Great Britain, again issued in parts from 1812. Sowerby also provided illustrations for other natural history works, such as that of Strata Identified by Organized Fossils by William Smith. His major contribution to natural history was his vast correspondence with naturalists in Britain and abroad, illustrating the advice he gave and his encouragement to collectors of plants, birds, insects, fossils and minerals. Many specimens were sent to him for identification. He too sent others in return, together with copies of parts of his publications, stimulating further research. He had his own museum at 2 Mead Place Lambeth, which was regularly visited by other naturalists. He married Anne de Carle of Norwich. His eldest son James de Carle Sowerby (1787-1871) and second son George Brettingham Sowerby (1788-1854) assisted him in his work. Their children too were artists and naturalists.
Born, c 1637; Education: Westminster School; Christ Church, Oxford; BA (1658), MA (1660); Career: Began his travels before he had taken his Master's degree, captured by pirates and sold; returned to Oxford (c 1660); accompanied the Earl of Carlisle, Ambassador-Extraordinary to Sweden (1668); Secretary to the Embassy at Paris, where he acted as medium of communication between men of science in England and France (1669-1671); Fellow of the Royal Society, 1672; travelled through Venice, Dalmatia, Greece, Turkey and Persia, where he was murdered by some Arabs in a quarrel over a penknife, 1677.
Born, 1856; Education: Owen's College, Manchester; Trinity College, Cambridge. BA (1880); Career: Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge; Profesor of Natural Philosophy, Royal Institution, London; Cavendish Professor of Physics, Cambridge (1884-1918); Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (1918); Fellow of the Royal Society, 1884; died, 1940.
Born in Victoria, Australia, 1891; Education: MBBS (Melbourne, 1915); MD, DSc; career: Served in the Australian Army Medical Corps (World War One); Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne (1920); Medical Research Officer, Bombay; returned to Hall Institute (1927); Lecturer, School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1929-1940); Consulting Physician, Australian Military Forces (1940-1942); Director of Medicine and Chairman, Combined Advisory Committee on Tropical Medicine, South Pacific Area (1942-1946); Professor of Tropical Medicine, London (1946); resigned on health grounds (1948); Fellow of the Royal Society, 1942; Buchanan Medal, 1957; died, 1966.
Born, 1859; Education: DSc (Lond); Honours: CIE 1908; KCIE 1913; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1895; died 1940.
Born, 1827; Education: University College, London; PhD (Giessen); Career: Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry, St Thomas's ( by 1852); Fullerian Professor of Chemistry, Royal Institution (1874-1877); undertook pioneer research in optics and spectroscopy; worked with the Young Men's Christian Association, and the Christian Evidence Society (CES); suffered a cardiac seizure after a meeting of the CES and was found dead in his study; Royal Society, 1853; Davy Medal, 1897; died, 1902.
Born in Edinburgh. Son of James Cumming of Duthil, Inverness-shire. Taken into service by Lord Milton on account of his precocious mechanical skill. Member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh. Working in Inverary, Argyll as watchmaker and enrolled as burgess by 1752. With his brother John employed by Duke fo Argyll in making a new organ for his castle at Inverary, and a long case clock for the castle. Argyll's family connections with John Stuart, third Earl of Bute and tutor to George III led to patronage and Cumming's establishment in New Bond Street London. His reputation led him to be appointed a member of the commission to adjudicate on John Harrisons's 'timekeeper for discovering the longitude at sea'. One of those who insisted that a second timekeeper be made according to Harrison's principles to prove he had both fully disclosed his methods and had invented a reliable means of checking longitude. His essay 'Elements of Clock and Watch Work Adapted to Practice' printed in 1766 where he outlined his ideas about clockwork and included one fo the earliest designf for a gravity escarpment, seemingly arose when he was appointed to the commission on Harrison's timekeeper, and he deposited it with the Philosophicle Society of Edinburgh to protect himself against the possibility of charges of plagiarism after he had heard Harrison's explanation.
He was especially interested in the measurement of air pressure and the ideas outlined by Robert Hooke for recording barometer readings, in 1765 making a special clock for George III which recorded on a chart the changes in barometer readings over a year. This is considered to be the first effective recording barograph, and he was paid £15 per year to maintain it. The next year he made a slightly different version for his own use, which after his death was bought by Luke Howard, who used it for the observations that formed the basis of his pioneering work ' The Climate of London'. He made two gold stopwatches for William Hamilton FRS 1766 at Naples, and in 1769 a watch for Charles Blagden FRS 1772, on whose behalf he ordered an electifying machine from Jesse Ramsden FRS 1786.
Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952) was Professor-Superintendent of the Brown Institution, which specialised in research into diseases of domestic animals. The Institute was situated in Wandsworth Road, South West London and was destroyed by bombing in 1944. Sherrington was later Professor of Pathology, University of London, and Lecturer on Physiology at St Thomas's Hospital.
John Newport Langley was born, 1852; Education: Exeter Grammar School; St John's College, Cambridge. BA (1875), MA (1878), ScD (1896); Career: Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1877, re-elected 1885); Lecturer, Trinity College, Cambridge; Lecturer, Cambridge University (1883-1903); Professor of Physiology, Cambridge (1903-1925); Fellow of the Royal Society, 1883; Royal Medal, 1892; Royal Society Council, 1897-1898; Royal Society Vice President, 1904-1905; died, 1925.
Francis Gotch was born, 1853; Education: BA; BSc (Lond); Hon MA (Oxon); MRCS; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1892; died, 1913.
Born, 1759; Foreign Member of the Royal Society, 1819; died, 1829.
The British Empire Exhibition was an exhibition held at Wembley, Middlesex in 1924 and 1925. Its official aim was " to stimulate trade, to strengthen the bonds that bind the Mother Country to her Sister States and Daughter Nations, to bring all into closer touch, the one with the other, to enable all who owe allegiance to the British Flag to meet on common ground, and to learn to know each other. It is a family party, to which every member of the Empire is invited, and at which every part of the Empire is represented". It was opened by King George V 23 April 1924. Of the 58 members of the British Empire only Gambia and Gibraltar did not take part.
Boole was born in Lincoln on 2 November 1815, son of a small tradesman interested in mechanics and mathematics. He attended the National School in Lincoln and then the small commercial school of Thomas Bainbridge. He engaged in teaching from the age of sixteen, then at twenty opened his own school in the village of Waddington. He devoted every spare minute to the study of Greek, Latin and the modern languages of French, German and Italian. In 1844, while applying the doctrine of the separation of symbols to the solution of differential equations with viable coefficients, he was led to devise a general method in analysis. This paper was printed in the Philosophical Transactions of 1844, and he was awarded the Royal Medal for it. His work had led him to consider the possibility of constructing a calculus of deductive reasoning. He found that logical symbols in general conform to the same fundamental laws which govern the laws of algebra in particular, while also subject to a certain special law. This led to his remarkable essay, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, published in 1847. This demonstrated the calculus of logic, upon the invention of which Boole's fame as a philosophical mathematician rests, and was followed by the publication An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, on which are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities (subsequently known as 'The Laws of Thought') of 1854. In 1849 he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics in the newly formed Queen's University of Cork. He produced two highly regarded textbooks on 'Differential Equations' and 'Finite Differences', and published a number of highly original papers in various journals, including the Philosophical Transactions. In 1852 the University of Dublin conferred on him the honorary title of LL.D., in consideration of his eminent services to the advancement of mathematical science. In 1857 he was awarded the Keith Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in June of the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1859 at the Oxford Commemoration he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. In 1855 he married Mary, the daughter of the Rev T R Everest, by whom he had five daughters. He died on 8 December 1864 of a feverish cold and congestion of the lungs.
Born, 1775; Profession: Scientific instrument maker; Career: succeeded to his father's business, and extended it to scientific instrument making; invented apparatus, including a Eudiometer, and the Pepys Water gas holder; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1808; died, 1856.
Isaac Newton was born, 1642; Education: Grantham Grammar School; Trinity College, Cambridge; BA (1665), MA (1668); Career: Left Cambridge because of the plague and spent two years at Woolsthorpe, where he did most of the work later published in the 'Principia Mathematica' and 'Opticks' (1665-1667); Fellow of Trinity (1667-death); Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge (1669-1701); MP for Cambridge University (1689, 1701); Warden of the Mint (1696); Master of the Mint (1699-death); Commissioner for Assessment for Cambridge, Cambridge University and Lincolnshire (1689-1690); acknowledged throughout Europe as a great scientist, philosopher and mathematician, he was involved in bitter controversies with Robert Hooke (FRS 1663), with Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (FRS 1673) over the calculus and with John Flamsteed (FRS 1677) over the publication of his astronomical observations; his body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster; Benefactor to the chapels of Christ's and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge and to Addenbrooke's Hospital; Fellow of the Royal Society, (1672); President of the Royal Society, (1703-1727); Royal Society Council (1697, 1699); died, 1727.
Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield was Born, 1919; Education: Magnus Grammar School, Newark; City and Guilds examination in Radio Communications; diploma from Faraday House Electrical Engineering College, London; Career: Builder's drawing office; volunteer reservist with RAF during WW2 - radar mechanic instructor working at Royal College of Science and then Cranwell Radar School, RAF Certificate of Merit (1945); joined research staff Electric and Musical Industries (EMI) Hayes (1951) working on first all transistor computer to be constructed in Britain (EMIDEC 1100, 1958), moved to EMI Central Research Laboratories where he developed the EMI brain scanner, first demonstrated at Atkinson Morley's Hospital, Wimbledon in September 1971; Head of Medical Systems Section, Thorn EMI Central Research Laboratories (1972-1976), Chief Staff Scientist (1976-1977), Senior Staff Scientist (1977-1985), Consultant to Laboratories (1986-2004); winner of MacRobert Award (1972) and many other honours including Lasker Award (1975); continued to work as a consultant for EMI after retirement until 2002 and also for National Heart and Chest Hospitals, Chelsea and the National Heart Hospital and the Brompton Hospital; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (1994), received six honorary degrees and more than forty awards; Mullard Medal 1977; Nobel Prize (Physiology or Medicine) 1979; Fellow of the Royal Society (1975); died, 2004.
Born, 1892; Kt, 1960; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1941; Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, 1955-1960; Vice President of the Royal Society, 1959-1960; died, 1977.
Education: Merchant Taylors' School; St John's College, Oxford; BCL (1683), Incorporated at Cambridge (1685), DCL (1694); studied botany under Tournefort in Paris (1686-1688); Leyden (admitted 1694); Padua (admitted 1696). Career: Fellow of St John's (1683-1703); granted permission to travel abroad for three periods of five years each (1685); travelled to Geneva, Rome and Naples, Cornwall and Jersey, sending lists of the plants he saw to John Ray (FRS 1667); Tutor to Sir Arthur Rawdon at Moira, Co Down (1690-1694), Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend (FRS 1706), with whom he travelled in Europe (1694), Wriothesley, son of William, Lord Russell, with whom he travelled in France and Italy (1695-1699), Henry, Duke of Beaufort, at Badminton (1700-1702); Commissioner for Sick and Wounded Prisoners (1702); English Consul at Smyrna, where he grew many rare plants in his garden, formed a celebrated herbarium and travelled in Asia Minor (1703-1717); travelled in Europe (1721, 1723, 1727); bequeathed £3000 to found the chair of Botany at Oxford first occupied by his friend John James Dillenius (FRS 1724).