Daily Quiddity: Positive Quiddity: The Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence.

Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London". The Society today acts as a scientific advisor to the British government, receiving a parliamentary grant-in-aid. The Society acts as the UK's Academy of Sciences, and funds research fellowships and scientific start-up companies.

The Society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the Society's President, according to a set of Statutes and Standing Orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the Society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows. There are currently 1,314 Fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), with 44 new Fellows appointed each year. There are also Royal Fellows, Honorary Fellows and Foreign Fellows, the last of which are allowed to use their postnominal title ForMemRS (Foreign Member of the Royal Society). The current Royal Society President is Sir Paul Nurse, who took up the position on 30 November 2010.

Since 1967, the Society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London.

Founding and Early Years
The Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at variety of locations, including Gresham College in London. They were influenced by the "new science", as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis, from approximately 1645 onwards. A group known as The Philosophical Society of Oxford was run under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library. After the English Restoration, there were regular meetings at Gresham College. It is widely held that these groups were the inspiration for the foundation of the Royal Society.

18^th Century
During the 18th century, the gusto that had characterised the early years of the Society faded; with a small number of scientific "greats" compared to other periods, little of note was done. In the second half, it became customary for Her Majesty’s Government to refer highly important scientific questions to the Council of the Society for advice, something that, despite the non-partisan nature of the Society, spilled into politics in 1777 over lightning conductors. The pointed lightning conductor had been invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1749, while Benjamin Wilson invented blunted ones. During the argument that occurred when deciding which to use, opponents of Franklin's invention accused supporters of being American allies rather than being British, and the debate eventually led to the resignation of the Society's President, Sir John Pringle. During the same time period, it became customary to appoint society Fellows to serve on government committees where science was concerned, something that still continues.

19^th Century to the Present
The early 19th century has been seen as a time of decline for the society; of 662 fellows in 1830, only 104 had contributed to the Philosophical Transactions. The same year, Charles Babbage published Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes, which was deeply critical of the Society. The scientific Fellows of the Society were spurred into action by this, and eventually James South established a Charters Committee "with a view to obtaining a supplementary Charter from the Crown", aimed primarily at looking at ways to restrict membership. The Committee recommended that the election of Fellows take place on one day every year, that the Fellows be selected on consideration of their scientific achievements and that the number of fellows elected a year be limited to 15. This limit was increased to 17 in 1930 and 20 in 1937; it is currently 44. This had a number of effects on the Society: first, the Society's membership became almost entirely scientific, with few political Fellows or patrons. Second, the number of Fellows was significantly reduced—between 1700 and 1850, the number of Fellows rose from approximately 100 to approximately 750. From then until 1941, the total number of Fellows was always between 400 and 500.

Motto
The Society's motto, Nullius in verba, is Latin for "Take nobody's word for it". It was adopted to signify the Fellows' determination to establish facts via experiments and comes from Horace’s Epistles, where he compares himself to a gladiator who, having retired, is free from control.

Functions and Activities
The Society has a variety of functions and activities. It supports modern science; it finances approximately 700 research fellowships for both early and late career scientists, along with innovation, mobility and research capacity grants. Its Awards, prize lectures and medals all come with prize money intended to finance research, and it provides subsidised communications and media skills courses for research scientists. In 2008, the Society opened the Royal Society Enterprise Fund, intended to invest in new scientific companies and be self-sustaining, funded (after an initial set of donations on the 350th anniversary of the Society) by the returns from its investments.

Through its Science Policy Centre, the Society acts as an advisor to the European Commission and the United Nations on matters of science. It publishes several reports a year, and serves as the Academy of Sciences of the United Kingdom. Since the middle of the 18th century, government problems involving science were irregularly referred to the Society, and by 1800 it was done regularly. The Society now formally acts as Her Majesty Government's chief scientific advisor, and is the United Kingdom's Academy of Sciences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

The Royal Society is the oldest of an entire system of parallel existing societies.

This is a list of Royal Societies listed alphabetically: