Royal Society founding

The phenomenon of thermal transpiration was discovered by Osborne Reynolds [82], who gave a clear and detailed description of his experiments, together with a theoretical analysis, in a long memoir read before the Royal Society in February of 1879. He experimented with porous plates of stucco, ceramic and meerschaum and, in the absence of pressure gradients, found that gas passes through the plates from the colder to the hotter side. His experimental findings were summarized in the following "laws" of thermal transpiration. 

Photo-de-diazoniation has found relatively little application in organic synthesis, as is clearly evident from the annual Specialist Periodical Reports on Photochemistry published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Since the beginning of these reports (1970) they have contained a section on the elimination of nitrogen from diazo compounds, written since 1973 by Reid (1990). In the 1980s (including 1990), at least 90% of each report is concerned with dediazoniations of diazoalkanes and non-quinon-oid diazo ketones, the rest being mainly related to quinone diazides and only occasionally to arenediazonium salts. 

Professor W. L. Bragg has written the author that the same ideal structure has been found by J. West (paper to be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society). 

The oldest annual review publication still publishing is Annual Reports on the Progress of Chemistry, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (formerly the chemical Society), which began in 1905 and which covers the whole field of chemistry. Since 1967 it has been divided into sections. Organic chemistry is found in Section B. 

Born in London, Paul May grew up in Redditch, Worcestershire. He went on to study at Bristol University, where he graduated with a first class honours in chemistry in 1985. He then joined GEC Hirst Research Centre in Wembley where he worked on semiconductor processing for three years, before returning to Bristol to study for a PhD in plasma etching of semiconductors. His PhD was awarded in 1991, and he then remained at Bristol to co-found the CVD diamond research group. In 1992 he was awarded a Ramsay Memorial Fellowship to continue the diamond work, and after that a Royal Society University Fellowship. In October 1999 he became a full-time lecturer in the School of Chemistry at Bristol. He is currently 36 years old. His scientific interests include diamond films, plasma chemistry, interstellar space dust, the internet and web technology. His recreational interests include table-tennis, science fiction, and heavy metal music. 

This work was supported by the Marsden Fund managed by the Royal Society of New Zealand. Our thanks go to Detlev Figgen, Behnam Assadollahzadeh, Reuben Brown, Jon K. Laerdahl and Pekka Pyykko for helpful discussions and suggestions, and to Wojciech Grochala for letting us know in advance of the solid state results for gold fluoride. We do not claim that our review is comprehensive, and we apologize from possible omissions of any related and important work. A more complete list of references can be found in Pyykko s work [43-45]. 

Frankland s birth may have prevented him from attaining the highest professional honors. Frankland practically founded the Institute of Chemistry, the world s first professional association for scientists, but tellingly, he never became president of the prestigious Royal Society. Even Frankland s close friend Huxley wrote dismissively, Frankland won t do. ... 

A great account of this story can be found in the citation by the Royal Society of London on the occasion of the awarding of the Rumford Medal to Louis Pasteur by the President, Lord Wrottesley, on December 1, 1856 Proc. Roy. Soc. London 1857, VII, 254- 257. The text of the citation and more about Pasteur can be found at http //www.foundersofscience.net/, a website created and hosted by Dr. David V. Cohn, Professor of Biochemistry, University of Louisville. 

The nonspecialized scientific tradition that was pursued until the 1840s at the Royal Society was characteristic of many British and American scientific academies and societies in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Edinburgh Philosophical Society (founded in 1737) set up two broad divisions, for example. There was a section for chemistry, anatomy, botany, medicine, metals and minerals, natural history, and "what is of a more particular nature" and a section for "the general parts" of science, namely, geometry, astronomy, mechanics, optics, and geography. 3 8... 

Shapin, Steven. "Property, Patronage and the Politics of Science The Founding of the Royal Society of Edinburgh." BJHS 7 (1974) 141. 

The discovery on which his fame rests was announced before the Royal Society on November 26, 1801, in a paper entitled Analysis of a Mineral from North America containing a Metal hitherto Unknown (3). This mineral, now known as columbite, is a black rock found in New England, and the specimen Hatchett analyzed had an interesting history. 

In the following year Hatchett was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1798 he analyzed an earthy substance, sydneia, which Josiah Wedgwood had found in New South Wales and another specimen of it provided by Sir Joseph Banks (5). This, according to Wedgwood, was composed of a fine white sand, a soft white earth, some colourless micaceous particles, and some which were black. Hatchett found it to consist of siliceous earth, alumine, oxide of iron, and black lead or graphite and concluded that the Sydneian genus, in future, must be omitted in the mineral system. ... 

Upon referring to Sir Hans Sloane s catalogue, said Hatchett before the Royal Society on November 26, 1801, I found that this specimen was only described as a very heavy black stone, with golden streaks which proved to be yellow mica and it appeared that it had been sent with various specimens of iron ores to Sir Hans Sloane by Mr. Winthrop of Massachusetts. The name of the mine, or place where it was found, is also noted in the catalogue the writing, however, is scarcely... 

In his Chemistry in Old Philadelphia Edgar F. Smith stated that Hatchett found. .. a new element in a mineral of the Royal Society Collection which had been sent in from Haddam, Connecticut, and been called there columbite by Governor Winthrop (42). 

Charles Wood, a metallurgist and assayer, found in Jamaica some platinum from Cartagena [Colombia], and in 1741 took some of it to his relative, Dr. Brownrigg, After preparing a thorough and accurate description of the metal and its properties, Dr. Brownrigg in 1750 presented these specimens to the Royal Society of London. The exhibit included the ore as found in Nature, the purified metal, the fused metal, and a sword with a pummel made partly of platinum (2). 

A paper read by Watson before the Royal Society on December 13, 1750, contained an excerpt from a letter, dated Whitehaven, December 5th of the same year, in which Dr. Brownrigg had mentioned some experiments which a friend of his had made on the semi-metal called Platina di Pinto (sic ), a substance which he had not found mentioned... 

The little bit that came, said Cronstedt, lie handed over to Scheffer, who, driven by his customary zeal, soon solved the mystery of its nature, and showed in a paper that it was a peculiar metal, different from all others, almost infusible when alone, just as noble as gold, and less pliable. He anticipated Mr. Lewis, who made experiments on a greater quantity of it and later published the results of them in the Transactions of the British Scientific Society [Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (67)], but during the investigation neither was aware of the other s manipulations and conclusions, wherefore each of them established a special property in addition to what they in all other respects found to be identical. 

---