Array of luminaries

In November 1660, on a damp night at Gresham College in London, a young shaver named Christopher Wren gave a lecture on astronomy. In the clearly appreciative audience were 12 ‘prominent gentlemen’, who in discussions afterwards, possibly over a drink or two, decided they would meet every week to talk about science and perform experiments. In a flash, this informal gathering coalesced into a society, which they called ‘a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning’. As Bill Bryson writes in his introduction, ‘nobody had ever done anything quite like this before, or would ever do it half as well again.’

In 1662 Charles II granted them a charter, and the society became the Royal Society. This great scientific talking shop, famous for its astonishing profusion of meetings and committees, effectively invented the system of scientific publishing and peer review that has prevailed ever since.

With its far-sighted, internationalist outlook, it made English the language of science. It promoted clarity of thought, systematic experimentation and the whole notion of a scientific community, wherein knowledge was added incrementally by many hands rather than left to the handful of individual geniuses who had made all the running in the past.

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Not that it excluded the geniuses. Isaac Newton was an early President, and eminent names have queued up to become Fellows ever since. Over 350 years, the Royal Society has become one of those British institutions (a little like the BBC) that we tend to take for granted, but which probably contribute as much as anything to the tiny vestiges of goodwill and respect we still manage to inspire beyond these shores.

So it’s probably unwise for the Society to put its distinguished head above the parapet and publish this substantial hardback to celebrate its 350th anniversary.