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Royal Society   /rˈɔɪəl səsˈaɪəti/   Listen
Royal Society

noun
1.
An honorary English society (formalized in 1660 and given a royal charter by Charles II in 1662) through which the British government has supported science.  Synonym: Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.






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"Royal Society" Quotes from Famous Books



... case is one of which you may find the whole details in the "Philosophical Transactions" for the year 1813, in a paper communicated by Colonel Humphrey to the President of the Royal Society,—"On a new Variety in the Breed of Sheep," giving an account of a very remarkable breed of sheep, which at one time was well known in the northern states of America, and which went by the name of the Ancon or the Otter breed of ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley

... with mountains, islands, villages, and domains of Indian tribes, whose very names have at this day sunk into oblivion. The map was afterward published, in 1710, by John Senex, F.R.S., as a part of North America, corrected from the observations communicated to the Royal Society at London and the Royal ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... the half-dozen young men, studious of the "New Philosophy," who met in one another's lodgings in Oxford or in London, in the middle of the seventeenth century, grew in numerical and in real strength, until, in the latter part, the "Royal Society for the improvement of Natural Knowledge" had already become famous, and had acquired a claim upon the veneration of Englishmen, which it has ever since retained, as the principal focus of scientific activity ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley

... Diana stood her brother and sister-in-law, the Duke and Duchess de Polignac, who were ambitious, proud, and avaricious; behind the Duchess Diana stood the three favorites of the royal society in Trianon —Lords Vaudreuil, Besenval, D'Adhemar- -who desired embassies, ministerial posts, orders, and ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... abilities in his profession, made him frequently consulted in points relating both to practice and opinion. His love for the real philosophy of nature, and his conviction that the study of it is the most solid support of religion, induced him, not many years after the establishment of the Royal Society, to desire to be admitted into that assembly of the greatest men of the age; into which he was accordingly elected on the 25th of January, 1672. His kindness towards the dissenters was attended with the consequence intended by him, of reconciling many of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... part in the American Revolution. Soon after the battle of Bunker Hill, having lost his wife, he embarked for England, bearing despatches to the English government. There he soon became distinguished as a learned man and philosopher, and was elected a member of the Royal Society. He was ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... this time, gave a dignity to rural pursuits by his "Sylva" and "Terra," both these treatises having been recited before the Royal Society. The "Terra" is something muddy,[4] and is by no means exhaustive; but the "Sylva" for more than a century was the British planter's hand-book, being a judicious, sensible, and eloquent treatise upon a subject as wide and as beautiful as its title. Even Walter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... "A comparative view," etc. (1785).—Arthur Young, I. 123. "I should pity the man who expected, without other advantages of a very different nature, to be well received in a brilliant circle in London, because he was a fellow of the Royal Society. But this would not be the case with a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, he is sure of a good ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... an account of a mother carrying twins, extrauterine, for six years. Mounsey of Riga, physician to the army of the Czarina, sent to the Royal Society in 1748 the bones of a fetus that had been extracted from one of the fallopian tubes after a lodgment of thirteen years. Starkey Middleton read the report of a case of a child which had been taken out of the abdomen, having lain there nearly sixteen years, during which ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... as none but a blind man would fail to make use of. I have sent two or three papers home already to be published, which I have great hopes will throw light upon some hitherto obscure branches of natural history, and I have just finished a more important one, which I intend to get read at the Royal Society. The other day I submitted it to William Macleay (the celebrated propounder of the Quinary system), who has a beautiful place near Sydney, and, I hear, "werry much approves what I have done." All this goes to the comforting side of the question, and gives me hope of being ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... daring, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single thing he doesn't like;—nor any salvation, either of Queen or Realm, being any more possible to God, unless under the direction of the Royal Society: then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, "high lyric to low rational." Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of France—resumed ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... flow of mathematical and physical discoveries so rapid that ten years added more to the sum of knowledge than all that had been added since the days of Archimedes, the introduction of organised co-operation to increase knowledge by the institution of the Royal Society at London, the Academy of Sciences at Paris, Observatories—realising Bacon's Atlantic dream—characterise the opening of a ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... agreed that the accusation was a deliberate falsification. Huxley wrote to him on the subject and has almost or quite cut him in consequence; and so would Hooker, but he was advised not to do so as President of the Royal Society. Well, he has gained his object in giving me pain, and, good God, to think of the flattering, almost fawning speeches which he has made to me! I wrote, of course, to him to say that I would never speak to him again. I ought, however, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... one of the many magnificent contributions to the literature of natural history issued by the Royal Society. It treats of curious animals which the author considers as more nearly allied to the Insecta than to the Crustacea or Arachnidae. It is magnificently illustrated with 78 plates (31 being coloured), ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... here the noble words of Dr. Dawson, who in an address before the Royal Society of Canada, ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... the fears of the Jesuits, and their rancour against Arnauld, who with such ability had exposed their designs, occasioned the destruction of the Port-Royal Society. Exinanite, exinanite usque ad fundamentum in ea!—"Annihilate it, annihilate it, to its very foundations!" Such are the terms of the Jesuitic decree. The Jesuits had long called the little schools of Port-Royal the hot-beds of heresy. The Jesuits obtained by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... earthen pott of the colour of a Crucible, and of the shape of a prentice's Christmas Box, with a slit in it, containing about a quart, which was near full of money. This pot I gave to the Repository of the Royal Society at Gresham College." ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... the chamber to the Duke of York, and brother to Lord Viscount Brounker, president of the royal society. Lord Clarendon imputes to him the cause of the great sea-fight, in 1665, not being so well improved as it might have been, and adds, "nor did the duke come to hear of it till some years after, when Mr. Brounker's ill course of life, and his abominable nature, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... harmony of opinion, on all subjects, was long an honored instructor and Fellow of Harvard College, and Minister of the First Church, at Cambridge. He was celebrated here and in England, for his learning, and endeared to all men by his virtues. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Jeremiah Dummer, as well qualified to pronounce such an opinion as any man of his time, places him as a preacher above all his contemporaries, in either Old ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... this conference was laid before Parliament, and the result was a vote of money for the purchase of instruments and the discussion of observations, under the superintendence of the Board of Trade. Arrangements were then made, in accordance with the views of the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for the ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... a conclusion. Both transactions and proceedings are used of the records of a deliberative body, especially when published; strictly used, the two are distinguished; as, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London give in full the papers read; the Proceedings of the American Philological Association give in full the business done, with mere abstracts of or extracts from the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... thought he had converted iron into rhodium, and carbon or paracyanogen into silicon. His paper upon this subject was published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and contained internal evidence, without a repetition of his experiments, that he was totally unacquainted with the principles of chemical analysis. But his experiments have been carefully repeated by qualified persons, and they have ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... been obliged to write a good deal from his own experience with paddle, sail, and steam. Of course there are many excellent articles, some of considerable length, in the Transactions of several learned societies, like the Royal Society of Canada, the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, the Nova Scotia Historical Society, the Ontario Historical Society, and so on. There are also a certain number of pamphlets and official bluebooks—like those of the department of {190} Marine and Fisheries; and there is an immense mass of ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... Professor Redwood quite merited any of these terms long before they came upon the marvellous discovery of which this story tells. Mr. Bensington was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a former president of the Chemical Society, and Professor Redwood was Professor of Physiology in the Bond Street College of the London University, and he had been grossly libelled by the anti-vivisectionists time after time. And ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... great attention to the structure of the sponge, brought proofs of its animal vitality before the Royal Society in the years 1752—57. And Mr. Ellis, five years afterward, by his dissections, set the question quite at rest; though he fell into the error of believing that the frame of the sponge was the outer case of worms or polypes. Later examination, however, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... the Royal Society at its meeting in London on November 6, in recognizing Dr. Albert Einstein's "theory of relativity" has caused a great stir in scientific circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Dr. Einstein propounded his theory nearly ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz

... abroad, as well as with us in England." The strife of the time indeed aided in directing the minds of men to natural inquiries. "To have been always tossing about some theological question," says the first historian of the Royal Society, Bishop Sprat, "would have been to have made that their private diversion, the excess of which they disliked in the public. To have been eternally musing on civil business and the distresses of the country was too melancholy a reflection. It was nature alone which could pleasantly entertain ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... it goes almost as a matter of course to every casual Prince, is a highly desirable recognition of public services. Beyond this there are certain British distinctions that might very advantageously be paralleled in America, the Fellowship of the Royal Society, for example, and that really very fine honour, as yet untainted by the class of men who tout for baronetcies ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... and learned the profession of a sailor in a merchant ship. Upon his return from his first voyage to the South Seas he published an account of his travels, and dedicated it to the President of the Royal Society, the Hon. Charles Mountague, who, appreciating the author's zeal and his intelligent public spirit, recommended him to the patronage of the Earl of Oxford, then Principal Lord of the Admiralty. Dampier's dedication has nothing of the fulsome flattery ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... action of drugs on the respiration. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Philosophy proposed to do the work of science, but in its own grand manner. The last twenty years of Hobbes's life, spent in repeated discomfiture at the hands of Seth Ward, Wallis, Boyle, and other scientific experts of the new Royal Society, certified conclusively to the failure of this enterprise, and the experimental specialist thereupon took exclusive possession of the field of natural law. But the idealist, on the other hand, reconstructed nature ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... a hard position; as it was said that he had attempted the experiment, and, living in London, had to subsist entirely on Italian organ-grinders. And his end was terrible, for just when he had begun, Sir Paul Swiller read his great paper at the Royal Society, proving that the savages were not only quite right in eating their enemies, but right on moral and hygienic grounds, since it was true that the qualities of the enemy, when eaten, passed into the eater. The notion ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... Wanstead, Essex, who obtained permission from Lord Castlemain to erect it in Wanstead Park, for the support of the then largest telescope in Europe, made by Monsieur Hugon, and presented by him to the Royal Society, of which he was a member. This enormous instrument, 125 feet in length, had not long remained in the park, when the following limping verses were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... Chester, born in Northamptonshire; married Oliver Cromwell's sister; wrote mathematical treatises, a curious one in particular, "Discovery of a New World," and was one of the founders of the Royal Society (1614-1672). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Association (Christchurch Branch). Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society. Obstetricians and Gynaecologists attached to the Public Hospitals in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. Pharmaceutical Society. Police Department. Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. Roman Catholic Church. Royal Society for the Health of Women and Children. St. John Ambulance Association Nursing Guild. Women's Division of the Farmers Union. Women's Division of the Farmers Union (Otago Branch). Women's Division of the Farmers Union (South Auckland ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan

... commercially successful with Thomas Savery. In 1699, Savery exhibited before the Royal Society of England (Sir Isaac Newton was President at the time), a model engine which consisted of two copper receivers alternately connected by a three-way hand-operated valve, with a boiler and a source of water supply. When the water in one receiver ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... 1698 at London, though Amsterdam is mentioned in the title page with the life of the author, by Mr. Toland; but the most compleat and elegant edition of his prose works was printed in two volumes in folio at London 1738, by the rev. Mr. Birch, now secretary to the Royal Society, with an Appendix concerning two Dissertations, the first concerning the Author of the [Greek: EIKON BASILIKE], the Portraiture of his sacred Majesty in his solitude and sufferings; and the prayer of Pamela subjoined to several editions of that book; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... spring of the year 1868, my friend Dr. W.B. Carpenter, at that time one of the Vice-Presidents of the Royal Society, was with me in Ireland, where we were working out together the structure and development of the Crinoids. I had long previously had a profound conviction that the land of promise for the naturalist, the only remaining region where there ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... also took me once to a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, where I saw Sir Walter Scott in the chair as President, and he apologised to the meeting as not feeling fitted for such a position. I looked at him and at the whole scene with some awe and reverence, and I think it was owing to this visit during ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... scientific world. Lord Kelvin, the greatest physicist of the age, declared himself 'literally filled with wonder and admiration for so much success in the novel and difficult problem which he had attacked.' Lord Rayleigh communicated the results of his remarkable researches to the Royal Society. And the Royal Society showed its appreciation of the high scientific value of his investigation, not only, by the publication, with high tributes, of a paper of his 'On the Determination of the Indices of Electric Refraction,' in December 1896, and another paper on the 'Determination of the Wave-length ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... I will add the letter of the Honourable Robert Boyle to Governor Endicot. The Hon. Robert Boyle was not only distinguished as the first philosopher of his age, but as the founder of the Royal Society and the President of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England—the Society which supported John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians of New England—for the Massachusetts Bay Government ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... philosophical romance translated from the German of Wieland by W.E. Frye, member of the Academy degli Arcadi in Rome, and of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquarians of Copenhagen, ex-major of infantry in ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... oneself, a second mirror in the shape of an ordinary hand looking-glass is necessary to reproduce the image in the small mirror. This is the way in which the renowned professor of singing, Senor Manuel Garcia, made those famous "Observations on the Human Voice," communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. Sharpey, on May the 24th, 1855. Similar attempts had been made before; for instance, in 1827 by Babington, in 1838 by Baumes, in 1840 by Liston, and in 1844 by Warden and Avery. But they had all ended in failure, an occasional glimpse ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... observations of the whaler Scoresby, who laid it before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which I have the honour to be an honorary member. You see that when it rains the waves are not very high, even under the influence of a violent wind, and when the weather is dry the sea is more agitated, even ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... back through the card index of his mind to find the reference, the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point of view that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationship to the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society of London (1667). ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... of the National Church of England, as by law established, to be eminently rational as well as scriptural. It is not, therefore, surprising to me that the clergy of the Church of England, since the foundation of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century, have done more for sound physical science than the clergy of any other denomination; or that the three greatest natural theologians with which I, at least, am acquainted—Berkeley, Butler, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... it that living fish add nothing to the "weight of the bucket of water in which they swim?" Charles II. is said to have asked the Royal Society. A still more extraordinary question has been propounded in the grave pages of the Quarterly Journal of Science, edited by Mr. Crookes, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the discoverer of the useful ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... science, in books, in conversation, in medicine, stilling and cookery. In 1661 he had lectured at Gresham College on The Vegetation of Plants. When the Royal Society was inaugurated, in 1663, he was one of the Council. His house became a kind of academy, where wits, experimentalists, occultists, philosophers, and men of letters worked and talked. This was the house in Covent Garden. An earlier one is also noted by Aubrey. "The faire howses in Holbourne between ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... possess of the life of Adam Smith is still the memoir which Dugald Stewart read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on two evenings of the winter of 1793, and which he subsequently published as a separate work, with many additional illustrative notes, in 1810. Later biographers have made few, if any, fresh contributions to the subject. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... spirit of discovery was reanimated in England, and an expedition was fitted out, at the instance of the Royal Society, primarily to observe a transit of Venus across the disk of the sun, which could only be done in some parts of the Pacific Ocean. Sir Hugh Palliser was again his friend, and Cook, raised to the rank of lieutenant, was appointed to the command. He selected a ship ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... beautiful "mirror" galvanometer of Lord Kelvin, Ex-President of the Royal Society, which we illustrate in figure 52, where C is a coil of wire with a small magnetic needle suspended in its heart, and D is a steel magnet supported over it. The needle (M figure 53) is made of watch spring cemented ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his explanation of binocular vision, a research which led him to construct the stereoscope. He showed that our impression of solidity is gained by the combination in the mind of two separate pictures of an object taken by both of our eyes from different points of view. Thus, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... preface: "There needs no Rhetoricating Floscules to set it off. The Authour, as is well known, having been a Person of Eminency for his Learning, and of Exquisite Curiosity in his Researches. Even that Incomparable Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight, Fellow of the Royal Society and Chancellour to the Queen Mother, (Et omen in Nomine) His name does sufficiently Auspicate the Work." The sale of the book is not recorded. It is supposed that the Lady Middlesex, so many of whose recipes had been used, directed that her chair be carried to the shop where the book was ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... a philosophical instrument maker; and in consequence of his having made many inventions and improvements in mechanics, he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1753. Not finding the business in which he first embarked likely to afford him much emolument, he turned his attention to architecture, and was recommended to Lord Macclesfield as a very suitable person to attempt the re-building of the Eddystone Lighthouse. His lordship ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... more than two decades ago, and practised by men of standing in the profession. Without dragging the case to light again by mentioning the names of those concerned, we may mention that not many years ago a highly respected member of the profession was, at the instigation of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, prosecuted for practising unsoling for the relief of side-bone. Practically only one other member of the profession was able to come forward and defend the operation on the score of its utility. We see now, however, that—as ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... region in the central and southern portions of New South Wales. For their eastern and northern boundaries the reader is referred to the map accompanying my paper to the American Philosophical Society in 1898.[1] The western boundary is shown on the map with my article to the Royal Society of New South Wales the same year.[2] Their southern limit is represented on the map attached to a paper I transmitted to the Anthropological Society at Washington in 1898.[3] The maps referred to were prepared primarily to mark out the boundaries of the social ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews

... his existence. His late royal highness was, during his whole life, the protector of literature, of the sciences, and of the arts, and of the professors and representives of all branches of knowledge. For a number of years his late royal highness was elected president of the Royal Society, and he received the learned members of that body in his house with the greatest amenity and kindness. Having himself sedulously cultivated all subjects of literature, science, and art, his late royal highness was, I may say, the patron, protector, and friend, of all those who pursued ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... cathedral from the degradation it had suffered, and bought an organ, "esteemed the best in England," which cost him L2,000. He was translated to Salisbury in 1667. He was a man of considerable ability and was a founder of the Royal Society. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... Scotch colonists, may be interesting to your readers. It is taken from a paper printed in Miscellanea Curiosa, vol. iii. p. 413., 2nd edit., entitled "Part of a Journal kept from Scotland to New Caledonia in Darien, with a short Account of that Country, communicated [to the Royal Society] by Dr. Wallace, F.R.S.": ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various

... despicable ostentation of patronage, and to build a sort of National Academy in the air, in the hope that Canning might one day lay its foundation in a more solid manner. [Footnote: Canning had his own opinion on the subject. When the Royal Society of Literature was about to be established, an application was made to him to join the committee. He refused, for reasons "partly general, partly personal." He added, "I am really of opinion, with Dr. Johnson, that the multitudinous personage, called The ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... which his imagination suggested should prove to be a true one—that is, an algebraic law. He put it to the test of experiment—committed the verification, that is, into the hands of his intellect—and found the method true. It has since been accepted by the Royal Society. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... practical sailor, who had shown considerable intelligence in sounding the St. Lawrence on Wolfe's expedition, and had afterwards been appointed marine surveyor of Newfoundland. When the Royal Society determined to send out an expedition to observe the transit of Venus, according to Halley's prediction, they were deterred from entrusting the expedition to a scientific man by the example of Halley himself, who had failed to obtain obedience ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... 23rd he came to London to transact some business, and to take the chair next day at a meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, of which he was a vice-president. This meeting took place in the afternoon, and he addressed a crowded assembly, which greeted him with great warmth. Those who were present, and saw his bright eyes and ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... the practical, the theoretical—blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the young, all crowded—eagerly crowded—the lecture-room." At the beginning of the year 1805 his salary was raised to 400 pounds a year. In May of that year the Royal Society awarded to him the Copley Medal. Within the next two years he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society. Since 1800 he had been advancing knowledge by experiments with galvanism. The Royal Institution raised a special fund to place at his disposal a more powerful galvanic battery ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... of La Mecanique Celeste, and the author of an important book on physical geography, Mrs. Somerville is, of course, well known. The scientific bodies of Europe covered her with honours; her bust stands in the hall of the Royal Society, and one of the Women's Colleges at Oxford bears her name. Yet, considered simply in the light of a wife and a mother, she is no less admirable; and those who consider that stupidity is the proper basis for the domestic virtues, and that intellectual women must of necessity be helpless with ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... de Montause, a distinguished member of the Academy of Inscriptions, a pillar of the Societe d'Histoire diplomatique, and a foreign member of the Royal Society, had been for nearly a year engaged at Nimrud in the work nearest to his heart, the work of excavation. It was a labour of love for which he was very jealous. He believed it was his mission to reveal to an astonished world the ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... husband, who, I find, by one of your last week's papers, was not altogether a stranger to you. When I married this gentleman, he had a very handsome estate; but, upon buying a set of microscopes, he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society; from which time I do not remember ever to have heard him speak as other people did, or talk in a manner that any of his family could understand him. He used, however, to pass away his time very innocently in conversation with ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... celebrating high mass in every part of the metropolis, organising schools, establishing convents, and building cathedrals, he could find time to move philanthropic resolutions at middle-class meetings, attend learned associations, and even occasionally send a paper to the Royal Society. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... Bugey with pleasure. In it is found the English 'th and the Greek 0, and in the word praou and others, a dipthong existing in no language, the sound of which no character can describe." (See 3d Volume of the Memoirs of the Royal Society ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... doctor named Breyn communicated with the Royal Society on the subject of the "Vegetable lamb," emphatically stating the story to be nothing more or less than a fable. He very naively remarked that "the work and productions of nature should be discovered, not invented," and he threw doubts as to whether those who had written about the ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... own farewell words. We once translated this Piron epitaph into a kind of rambling Drayton couplet; and the only point needing explanation is, that, from the accident of scientific men, Fellows of the Royal Society being usually very solemn men, with an extra chance, therefore, for being dull men in conversation, naturally it arose that some wit amongst our great-grandfathers translated F. R. S. into a short-hand expression for a Fellow Remarkably Stupid; to which version of the three letters our English ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... judge over philosophers; and the English expected his decision, as a solemn declaration of the superiority of the English philosophy over that of the French. But when it was found that this gentleman had compared Descartes to Sir Isaac, the whole Royal Society in London rose up in arms. So far from acquiescing with M. Fontenelle's judgment, they criticised his discourse. And even several (who, however, were not the ablest philosophers in that body) were offended at the comparison; and for no ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... forgotten. Some of our geological collections taken in the Pacific were, however, more fortunate. We were indebted for their preservation to the generous activity of Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society of London, who, amidst the political agitations of Europe, unceasingly laboured to strengthen the bonds of union between scientific men of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... room was discovered at Herculaneum in 1754. A full account of the discovery was drawn up at once by Signor Paderni, keeper of the Herculaneum Museum, and addressed to Thomas Hollis, Esq., by whom it was submitted to the Royal Society. I will extract, from this and subsequent letters, the passages ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... rather with that sober and leisurely-moving mass—the pendulum. Even in the seventeenth century, old Graunt was shocked when some irreverent babbler spoke of one of its honourable race by the rude epithet of 'a swing-swang;' and he penned an indignant protest on the subject to the Royal Society. Since that time the pendulum has done much more to merit the reverence of the world. Plain and simple as its outward bearing is, it really holds a high and dignified position in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... examples of the application of the Inductive Methods to a class of inquiries in which, for reasons which will presently be given, direct induction takes place under peculiar difficulties and disadvantages. As one of the most apt instances, I select his speculation (in the proceedings of the Royal Society for May 16, 1861) on the relations between muscular ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... seventeenth-century man. He was as witty as a character in a comedy; and it was already the comedy of Sheridan and not of Shakespeare. He was more modern yet when he enjoyed the pure experimentalism of the Royal Society, and bent eagerly over the toys that were to grow into the terrible engines of science. He and his brother, however, had two links with what was in England the losing side; and by the strain on these their dynastic cause was lost. The first, which lessened in its practical pressure as ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... whose shrewd and inquiring disposition made him intellectually one of the foremost figures of his day, foresaw clearly the great possibilities of this new invention. In letters to Sir Joseph Banks, then President of the Royal Society of London, Franklin gave a lively account of the first three ascensions, together with some comments, at once suggestive and humorous, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... of the origin of ambergris, was revived again about twenty-five years ago, and published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, as a new discovery. The only difference in the modern account of the matter is, that the ambergris originates within the alimentary canal of the whale, in consequence, probably, of some disease; and that the lumps which are found afloat, or cast on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... in some regions where the striation, apparently produced by ice proceeding from the north-west, is not explicable by the radiation of land-ice from a central mountainous region. (Milne Home Transactions of the Royal Society Edinburgh volume 25 1868-9.) ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... this country, conferred upon him the honorary degree of Master of Arts, and the Royal Society, in Europe, by a unanimous vote, elected him a member, remitting the usual initiation fee of five guineas, and the annual charge of two and a half guineas. The next year this Society conferred ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... you please," said the boy with dignity, though almost bursting with suppressed excitement. "I'm man-servant to Colonel John Brentwood, Esquire, M.P., F.R.Z.Q.T., Feller of the Royal Society—an' good society, an' every other society. Salary not yet fixed; lodgin', washin', an' wittles ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne

... the most influential early members of the Royal Society, in his Mathematicall Magick,[6] in 1648, suggested "four several ways whereby this flying in the air hath been or may be attempted." He listed, as the second, "By the help of fowls." Ten years earlier there appeared in England during the same year ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... of a pathetic case in point. In the Encyclopaedia Americana you will find a sketch of the life of George John Romanes, from which the following extract is taken: "Romanes, George John, English scientist. In 1879 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society and in 1878 published, under the pseudonym 'Physicus,' a work entitled, 'A Candid Examination of Theism,' in which he took up a somewhat defiant atheistic position. Subsequently his views underwent considerable change; he revised the 'Candid ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... mistaken, his sentiments touching ecclesiastical polity and public worship. He found only one see unprovided with a Bishop. Seth Ward, who had during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury, and who had been honourably distinguished as one of the founders of the Royal Society, having long survived his faculties, died while the country was agitated by the elections for the Convention, without knowing that great events, of which not the least important had passed under his own roof, had saved his Church and his country from ruin. The choice of a successor ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... rub his back legs together to produce stridulation, or, to put it quite shortly, he does not rub his back legs together at all. I hope I have made this point quite clear. If not, a more detailed treatment will be found in the Paper which I read to the Royal Society in 1912. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... papers communicated to the society, which have, hitherto, not been published, are inserted, in their proper order, as a supplement to the Philosophical Transactions. By Thomas Birch, D. D. secretary to the Royal society, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... have looked small and mean; the King resisted the compliment. This work, begun in 1671, was not completed till 1677; stone was scarce, and the restoration of London and its Cathedral swallowed up the produce of the quarries. "It was at first used," says Elmes, "by the members of the Royal Society, for astronomical experiments, but was abandoned on account of its vibrations being too great for the nicety required in their observations. This occasioned a report that it was unsafe; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... constellation of the Crane and in that of the Ship. I compared, at first with the naked eye, the stars which are not very distant from each other, for the purpose of classing them according to the method pointed out by Herschel, in a paper read to the Royal Society of London in 1796. I afterwards employed diaphragms diminishing the aperture of the telescope, and coloured and colourless glasses placed before the eye-glass. I moreover made use of an instrument of reflexion calculated to bring simultaneously two stars into the field of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... of the early fire-eaters was Robert Powell, whose public career extended over a period of nearly sixty years, and who was patronized by the English peerage. It was mainly through the instrumentality of Sir Hans Sloane that, in 1751, the Royal Society presented Powell a purse of gold and ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... the Guanches of Tenerife mummified their dead. The oldest description of this embalming is by a 'judicious and ingenious man who had lived twenty years in the island as a physitian and merchant.' It was inserted by Dr. Thomas Sprat in the 'Transactions of the Royal Society,' London, and was republished in John Ogilby's enormous folio [Footnote: The 'physitian' was Dr. Eden, an Englishman who visited Tenerife in 1662.—Bohn's Humboldtr, i. 66] yclept 'Africa.' The merchant 'set out from Guimar, a Town ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... fashion and of the London trade in dead birds and the refusal of women at that time to help us in trying to save the beautiful wild bird life of this country and of the world generally from extermination. Happily, the last twenty years of the life and work of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have changed all that, and it would not now be too much to say that all right-thinking persons in this country, men and women, are anxious to see the end of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... upon him to give. I am told I ought not to have expected him to give it, inasmuch as it is no longer usual for men of any but the lowest scientific standing to correct their misstatements when they are brought to book. Science is made for Fellows of the Royal Society, and for no one else, not Fellows of the Royal Society for science; and if the having achieved a certain position should still involve being obliged to be as scrupulous and accurate as other people, what is the good of the position? This view of the matter is practical, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... for the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (which was awarded to him in 1864), but being detained abroad, he gave his reasons for supporting Darwin for this honour in a letter to Sharpey, the Secretary of the Royal Society. A copy of the letter here printed seems to have ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... were known originally for their direful effects rather than their useful qualities. Miners were acquainted with two of them, called the choke damp and the fire damp, long before the establishment of the Royal Society; but the earliest printed account of either occurs in its Transactions, in the year 1667. The paper in which it is contained, is entitled, "A Description of a Well and Earth in Lancashire taking Fire, by a Candle approaching to it. Imparted by Thomas ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various

... sent in overwhelming, one production being as long as "Paradise Lost." Quality prevailed over quantity, and the award was made to Mrs. Hemans. This was not the only occasion on which she was adjudged the prize in a competition. In 1821 she obtained that awarded by the Royal Society of Literature for the best ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... nation, which has hitherto shown itself forward to protect and encourage those sciences by which the knowledge of mankind is extended or their condition ameliorated. Understand then, Sir, that I was chosen by that patron of science sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London, and one well known by all the literati throughout the world, to retrace part of the track of the immortal captain Cook—to complete what in New Holland and its neighbourhood he had left unfinished—and to perfect the discovery of that extensive ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... their great antiquity, and the vast heaps of cinders which they find, and are now of great value, being necessary for the making of iron at this day; and without which they cannot work." Evelyn's Diary of 5th November, 1662, also points to the same topic:—"The Council of the Royal Society met to amend the Statutes, &c., dined together; afterwards meeting at Gresham College, where was a discourse suggested by me, concerning planting his Majesty's Forest of Dean with oake, now so much exhausted of ye ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... neither does this Variation agree with our own Observations. The Tides flow full, and Change North and South, and rise Perpendicular 7 feet at Spring Tides and 4 feet at Niep tides. We found the North point of the Diping Needle, belonging to the Royal Society, to Dip 77 degrees 18 minutes. The Refreshments for Shipping to be got at this place are Wine, Water, Fruit of Several Sorts, and Onions in Plenty, and some Sweatmeats; but Fresh Meat and Poultry are very Dear, and not ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... with that great master of modern science, Sir William Crookes, the inventor of the celebrated "Crookes' Tubes," without which the discovery of the X-Ray and Radio-Activity would have been impossible. Several years ago, this eminent scientist, addressing the Royal Society, at Bristol, England,—a gathering made up of distinguished scientists from all over the world, most of the members being extremely sceptical concerning occult phenomena—said to the brilliant gathering: "Were I now introducing for the first time these inquiries ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita



Words linked to "Royal Society" :   honorary society, Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, academy



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