The Royal Society King Charles II Medal was instituted by Council in 1997. It is awarded at the discretion of Council only to foreign Heads of State who have made an outstanding contribution to furthering scientific research in their country. The Medal is awarded only in exceptional circumstances and is normally presented on the occasion of a State Visit. The first medal was awarded in 1998 to His Majesty Emperor Akihito of Japan, the second to the Prime Minister of India in 2007.
Born, 1845; Education: Owens College, Manchester; Heidelberg University, Bonn University. PhD (Heidelberg); Career: Professor of Chemistry, Andersonian Insitute, Glasgow (1870); Professor of Chemistry, Yorkshire College of Science, Leeds (1874-1885); Professor of Chemistry, Royal College of Science, London (1885); Director, Government Laboratories, London (1894); President, British Association (1921); keen yachtsman; FCS; FRSE; FChemSoc, FRS, 1876; Royal Medal, 1889; Secretary of the Royal Society, 1899-1903; Vice President of the Royal Society, 1894-1895; died, 1925.
Born, 1844; Education: Old Trafford Grammar School; Career: Assistant to John Tyndall, Royal Institution (1863-1866); taught at International College and the Royal School of Naval Architecture; Professor of Experimental Physics in the Royal College of Science for Ireland (1874-1910); chief founder of Society for Physical Research (1882), later became President; FRSE; MRIA; MIEE; Fell Phys Soc; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1899; died, 1925.
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, 1672; Research Fields: Medicine, natural history, mathematics, geology, geophysics; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1703; died, 1733.
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK's National Measurement Institute.The Royal Society appointed the first Director of the NPL, Richard Tetley Grazebrook, on 1 Jan 1900; the NPL was opened in Mar 1902.
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK's National Measurement Institute. The Royal Society appointed the first Director of the NPL, Richard Tetley Grazebrook, on 1 Jan 1900; the NPL was opened in Mar 1902.
The British Antarctic expedition (1910-1913) disembarked from Cape Evans on their ship the Terra Nova 4 Jan 1911 with the dual aims of conquering the geographical south pole for the British empire, and conducting extensive scientific research. The expedition was led Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Scott reached the south pole on 17 January 1912, only to discover that the Norweigan party, led by Roald Amundsen, had arrived a month earlier. All five Britons perished on the return. A search party found the bodies of Scott, Bowers, and Wilson on 12 Nov 1912.
Born 11 July 1857 in Magheragall, County Antrim, Ireland, Larmor attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, then Queen's University Belfast, where he received his BA and MA, and entered St John's College, Cambridge University, in 1877. He was Senior Wrangler in the mathematical tripos in 1880, was awarded a Smith's Prize and elected Fellow of St John's. He was Professor of Natural History at Queen's College Galway, 1880-1885, then returned as a lecturer to St John's. He became Lucasian Professor in 1903 after Sir George Gabriel Stokes, retiring in 1932. He was concerned with geometrical and physical aspects of a problem rather than the analytical, described in his 'Address on the Geometrical Method' of 1896. The researches for which he is chiefly remembered took place mainly between 1892-1901, a transition period in physics by the end of which X-rays, electrons and radio-activity had again set experimental physics in feverish progress, followed by revolutionary changes in the foundations of physical theory. Of those who brought classical physics to the point where new methods became inevitable, H A Lorentz and Larmor were the most prominent, preparing the old physics for the advent of the new. Larmor's major contribution to this was his book Aether and Matter, published in 1900, which began as a memoir published initially in the Philosophical Transactions between 1894-1897 and which to the student of the period was the gateway to new thought. He was concerned with numerous other subjects, such as the bending of radio waves round the earth (1924), with E H Hills producing a new kind of analysis of the irregular motion of the earth's axis of rotation as given by the determinations of latitude variation at the chain of International Latitude Observatories (1906 and 1915), protection from lightening (1914), and geomagnetism, on which he was a leading authority. His intense feelings over the Irish Question led him to enter Parliament, representing Cambridge University as a unionist from 1911 to 1922. His most important work outside the university was in the responsible and influential post of secretary of the Royal Society, 1901-1912.
The British National Antarctic or Discovery Expedition of 1901-1904 was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since James Clark Ross's voyage, 1839-1843. It was organised by a joint committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and it aimed to carry out scientific research and geographical exploration. Its scientific results covered extensive ground in biology, zoology, geology, meteorology and magnetism and King Edward VII Land, and the Polar Plateau via the western mountains route were discovered. The expedition did not make a serious attempt on the South Pole, its principal southern journey reaching a Furthest South at 82°17'S.
Nicolas Fatio de Duillier was born, 1664; educated in Geneva; Enrolled a citizen of Geneva (1678); originally intended to enter the Protestant ministry but later left to his own devices; corresponded with Gian Domenico Cassini (FRS 1672); went to Paris (1682); was informed of a plot to kidnap the Prince of Orange, which he revealed to Gilbert Burnet (FRS 1664) and they both went to Holland to tell the Prince; offered a chair of mathematics by the Prince of Orange in The Hague, but instead went to England; Tutor to the eldest son of Sir William Ellis, with whom he went to Utrecht (1690); returned to London (1691) where he taught mathematics; in Switzerland (1699-1701); involved himself in the dispute over the calculus between Isaac Newton (FRS 1672) and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (FRS 1673); associated himself with the Camisards and was prosecuted for spreading 'wicked and counterfeit prophecies' (1707); went on an expedition to convert the world, travelling through Germany and into Asia before returning to England; retired to Worcester; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1688; died, 1753.
George Lindsay Johnson, MD, FRCS.
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.
Professor Hartridge was a physiologist who made important contributions to knowledge of the mechanisms of hearing and sight as well as inventing apparatus, especially optical apparatus. He worked in the Physiology Department at Cambridge until 1927, then as Professor of Physiology at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School 1927-1947 and as Director of an MRC Unit at the Institute of Opthalmology 1947-1951. For further details see Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society vol 23, 1977, pp 193-211.
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.
Pasteur's research on fermentation and rabies led to his discovery that most infectious diseases are caused by germs, the 'germ theory of disease'. He invented pasteurisation and his work became a key influence on developments in bacteriology and microbiology as well as in gerenal medical practise; The Pasteur Institute was founded in 1887 by Louis Pasteur; Louis Pasteur's grandfather was Jean Henri Pasteur, and his aunt Jeannette Pasteur, were both of Vuillafans, near Besançon. A cousin, Maximien Buchon, was of Salins; Magnan family correspondence includes letters Marie and Louise Pasteur, Jules Raulin, Eugène Magnan, and Mathilde Magnan (afterwards Fournery); Jules Raulin (1836-1896), was Pasteur's first assistant, afterwards Sous-Directeur of Pasteur's Laboratoire de Chimie Physiologique at the Ecole Normale and Professor of Chemistry at Lyons. 1862-84 and n.d; Louis Pasteur's assistant Fernand Boutroux, was the brother of Jeanne Pasteur; Henry Debray (1827-1888) and Eugène Viala were also assistants to Pasteur; Jules Vercel was a school friend of Pasteur's from Arbois.
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, 1882; Education: MA; PhD; Career: Professor of Mathematical Physics in the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1928; died, 1946.
Born, 1888; Education: BA (Camb); Career: Reader in Pure Mathematics, University of Manchester; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1924; Sylvester Medal, 1949; died, 1972.
The International Association of Academies (1899-1913) was an association designed for the purpose of linking the various Academies around the world, of which the first meeting was held in Paris, France, in 1900.
Thomas Henry Holland was born on 22 November 1868 at Helston, Cornwall, of John Holland and Grace Treloar Roberts, one of eight children. Educated first at a dame's school at Helston, he later studied under John Gill, a schoolmaster at Helston, who, recognising his promise, prepared him for a scholarship to the Royal College of Science at South Kensington which he won at the age of sixteen. He won a London Associate 1st Class with Honours in Geology in 1888, and the Murchison Medal and Prize. Thomas Henry Huxley was then the Dean, and Holland became a lifelong admirer. After a period as assistant to Professor Judd at the Royal College of Science, he became a Berkeley Fellow at Owens College Manchester in 1889. In 1890, at the age of twenty one, he was appointed Assistant Superintendent in the Geological Survey of India. He travelled there via the United States, Canada and the Far East, arriving in Calcutta in October 1890 where he was made Curator of the Geological Museum and Laboratory, holding the post until 1896. He soon established a reputation as a petrographer and one interested in the economic side of geology, his energy and organizing ability soon becoming evident to the Government of India, being appointed Director of the Geological Survey of India 1903-1909. His work put the Geological Survey into a position of prestige in India, both with the Government and public, which it never lost. His outstanding service in India was recognized by the award of KCIE in 1908. He was appointed to the Chair of Geology and Mineralogy at Manchester University in 1909, taking it up in 1910. With Rutherford and Elliot Smith he formed the dominant trio, while influencing heavily the interest in petrology, geodesy and mineral deposits, and revifying the rather moribund mining department. He returned to India in 1916 as President of the Indian Munitions Board, resigning his professorship in favour of membership of the Advisory Council of the University. He married Frances Maud Chapman (died 1942), daughter of Charles Chapman, Deputy Commisisoner in Oudh, on 23 December 1896, and had one son, Major General John F C Holland, and one daughter, Margaretta, widow of Colonel A G Shea. In 1946 he married Helen Eileen, daughter of Frank Verrall, of Bramley, near Guildford, with whom he took a house in Surbiton in Surrey. She survived him and was, from 1948 until 1954, an active member of Surrey County Council. Holland was awarded KCIE for scientific services in 1908; KCSI for war services in 1918; and elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1904.
Henri Victor Regnault was born in Germany, 1810; Foreign Member of the Royal Society, 1852; Copley Medal, 1869; Rumford Medal, 1848; died in Paris, 1878.
Born, 1872; educated King's College, Cambridge, 1893-1897; research at Cambridge Physiological Laboratory, 1897-; lecturer at King's College, Cambridge, 1899; junior demonstrator in the physiological laboratory, 1904; senior demonstrator, 1907; fellow of the Royal Society, 1910; assistant tutor King's College, Cambridge, 1910; expedition to Tenerife, 1910; expedition to Monte Rosa, 1911; CBE, 1918; reader King's College, Cambridge, 1919; high-altitude expedition to Cerro de Pasco in Peru, in order to study pulmonary gas exchange, blood biochemistry, and several other topics, 1921-1922; professor of physiology at Cambridge, 1925; Copley medal of the Royal Society, 1943; died, 1947.
Publications: The Respiratory Function of the Blood (1914, 2nd edition, 1925).
Born, 1834; Education: King's College, London; Royal College of Chemistry; Lincoln College, Oxford. MA (Oxon); Career: Professor of Chemistry, Agricultural College, Cirencester (1863-1879); Professor of Chemistry, Royal Academy of Arts (1879-1911); wrote on organic, physiological and mineralogical chemistry; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1888; died, 1915.
Born, 1848; Education: Brasenose College, Oxford. BA (1871), MA (1874); Career:
Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford (1871-1876); Professor of Physics, Yorkshire College, Leeds (1874-1885); Professor of Physics, Royal College of Science, London (1886-1901); Fellow of the Royal Society, 1884; Royal Society Royal Medal, 1891; Secretary of the Royal Society Council, 1896-1901; died, 1915.
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.
Born, 1913; Education: Royal Grammar School, Guildford; Trinity College, Cambridge (1930-1935); Career: Commonwealth Fund Fellow, Princeton University (1935-1937); Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge (1937-1939, 1945-1946); Faculty Assistant Lecturer, Cambridge University (1937-1939); University Lecturer in Mathematics, Cambridge University (1945-1946); Reader in Theoretical Physics, Liverpool University (1939-1945); worked on radar with Admiralty Signal Establishment (1941) and on Joint Atomic Energy Project, Montreal (1944); Wykeham Professor of Physics, Oxford University, included a sabbatical as Visiting Professor at Princeton (1946-1954); appointed part time head of the theoretical physics division of the the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell (1950); Henry Overton Wills Professor of Physics, Bristol University (1954-1964); Professor of Physics, University of Southern California (1964-1968); Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of British Columbia (1968-1978); Fellow of the Royal Society (1951); died, 2003.
Born, 1906; educated at Sir George Monoux Grammar School, Walthamstow; Brasenose College, Oxford; demonstrator, Imperial College; assistant lecturer in mathematics at Swansea (1933–1937); lecturer at Dundee (1937–1938); lecturer at Manchester (1938–1945); Professor of Mathematics at Bangor (1945–1948); Professor of Applied Mathematics at Leeds, (1948-1970); ); Fellow of the Royal Society (1947); died, 1990.
Born, 1635; Education: Pupil of Samuel Cooper and Sir Peter Lely; Westminster School; Christ Church, Oxford; MA (1663); MD (Lambeth 1691); Career: Assisted Thomas Willis and Robert Boyle with their experiments; invented the pendulum watch; Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society (1662); Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London (1664); Cutlerian Lecturer (1664); Philosophical assistant to John Wilkins and William Petty at Durdans, Epsom, Surrey (1665); City Surveyor for London (1667); Doctor of Physic at Doctors' Commons (1691); died in penury, his salary (of several thousand pounds) as City Surveyor being found in an iron chest after his death; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1663; Curator of Experiments, 1662-1688; Secretary of the Royal Society, 1677-1682; 1677-1681; 1684; 1686; 1689-1690; 1692-1695; 1697-1699; died, 1703.
Education: School and University at Bremen; MTh (1639); Oxford (entered 1656). Career: Lived in England (1640-1648); travelled on the continent, returning to Bremen (1652); sent by the Council of Bremen to negotiate with Cromwell (1653); Tutor to Henry, son of Barnabas O'Brien, 6th Earl of Thomond, and Richard Jones (FRS 1663), son of Robert Boyle's sister, Catherine, Lady Ranelagh; accompanied Jones to France and Germany (1657-1660); published 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society' (1665-1677); imprisoned in the Tower of London (1667) on suspicion that his extensive foreign correspondence was political, rather than scientific; worked as a translator (1670).
Born, 1828; educated at Kensington grammar school and The Grange, Sunderland; earnt his living by teaching, first at Glasgow and than at the Royal Institution, Liverpool; attended St John's College, Cambridge, 1848-1852; second master of Bristol grammar school, 1852; headmaster, 1855; resigned his post at Bristol grammar school, 1860; opened a private school at Manilla Hall, Clifton, 1861-1881; devoted his leisure to microscopical research, in particular the study of the Rotifera; fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, 1872; president of the Royal Microscopical Society, 1888-1890; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1889; died, 1903.
Born, 1687; Free school at Holbeach; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; MB (1708), MD (1719); studied anatomy under Mr Rolfe, a surgeon in Chancery Lane, and medicine under Richard Mead (FRS 1703) at St Thomas's Hospital; practiced in Boston, Lincolnshire, 1710-1717; in London, 1717-1726; and in Grantham, Lincolnshire, 1726-1730, where his patients included members of the local aristocracy; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1718; ordained deacon and priest, 1729; Vicar of All Saints, Stamford, 1729-1747; Rector of St George-the-Martyr, Queen Square, London, 1747-1765; friend of Sir Isaac Newton (FRS 1672); died of palsy, 1765; his collections of Roman coins, fossils, pictures and antiquities were sold after his death.
Louis Poirot was missionary from the Congregation de propaganda fide at Pekin.
Born, 1800; educated successively at private schools at Tooting and at Winchester; joined his elder brother, who was king's counsel at Tortola (Virgin Islands), 1815, and spent his time surveying and learning Spanish and French; served for some years on Simón Bolívar's staff, Colombia, as a captain of engineers, and ultimately attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel; granted permission to survey the Isthmus of Panama and report on the best means of inter-oceanic communication, 1827; fellow of the Royal Society, 1830; employed, under the joint direction of the Board of Admiralty and the Royal Society, in determining the difference of level in the Thames between London Bridge and the sea, 1830-1831; colonial civil engineer and surveyor-general, Mauritius, 1831-1849; associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers and served on the council, 1849; special commissioner charged with organizing displays of manufacturing and industrial products for the Great Exhibition, 1851; British chargé d'affaires to Bolivia, 1851; died, 1854.
William Pengelly FRS (1812-1894) and Edward Vivian were superintendents of exploration at Kent's Cavern near Torquay in Devon.
Born, 1800; educated successively at private schools at Tooting and at Winchester; joined his elder brother, who was king's counsel at Tortola (Virgin Islands), 1815, and spent his time surveying and learning Spanish and French; served for some years on Simón Bolívar's staff, Colombia, as a captain of engineers, and ultimately attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel; granted permission to survey the Isthmus of Panama and report on the best means of inter-oceanic communication, 1827; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1830; employed, under the joint direction of the Board of Admiralty and the Royal Society, in determining the difference of level in the Thames between London Bridge and the sea, 1830-1831; colonial civil engineer and surveyor-general, Mauritius, 1831-1849; associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers and served on the council, 1849; special commissioner charged with organizing displays of manufacturing and industrial products for the Great Exhibition, 1851; British chargé d'affaires to Bolivia, 1851; died, 1854.