The history of the Royal Society in the nineteenth century is published as a full-length account for the first time in this book. Dr Marie Boas Hall has meticulously explored this fascinating period, using the Royal Society's own records. In 1800 the Royal Society was a leisurely club for scientists, scholars/politicians and patrons of science and learning. More important, it was a centre for improving knowledge of the natural sciences, and adviser to the Government on scientific matters. The first half of the book describes the manner of transition; the struggles and controversies among the...

The Royal Society of London, effectively Britain's national academy of science, has been particularly concerned with experimental science. Despite all that has been written in the past decades about the first half-century of the Royal Society's existence, no one has yet examined what took place at the society's weekly meetings or how far these meetings fulfilled the expressed aim of promoting "experimental learning." Aware that Hooke performed many experiments at meetings between 1662 and 1703, students of the early Royal Society have often believed its aim to be fully expressed in the...

Henry Oldenburg, born in 1619 in Bremen, Germany, first came to England as a diplomat on a mission to see Oliver Cromwell. He stayed on in England and in 1662 became the Secretary of the Royal Society, and its best known member to the entire learned world of his time. Through his extensive correspondence, now published, he disseminated the Society's ideals and methods at home and abroad. He fostered and encouraged the talents of many scientists later to be far more famous than he, including Newton, Flamsteed, Malpighi, and Leeuwenhoek with whom, as with many others, he developed real...