Anniversary Scrapbook

People and organisations all over the world are joining the celebration of the Royal Society's anniversary. Here we gather together some of the many forms it has taken, from stamps to space shuttles, plankton to pterosaurs and from the birth of science to the cutting edge of the 21st century.

Local Heroes

Celebrate the scientific heroes and mavericks of your area

Capital Science

A year of exhibitions, talks, conferences, seminars & workshops

“To be standing here as the Royal Society's most junior Fellow, on the 350th anniversary of the founding of this, the world's most illustrious scientific body is, quite simply, the most extraordinary honour for me.” Prince William, newly admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society, speaks to 700 Fellows and over 1000 other guests at the Convocation to celebrate the Society's 350th anniversary.

“Science isn't just for scientists. All should have a voice in ensuring that it's applied optimally – and to the benefit of both the developing and developed world. We must confront widely-held anxieties that genetics, brain science and artificial intelligence may run away too fast. As citizens, we all need a feel for how much confidence can be placed in science's claims...

“And, as I'll discuss, this is a crucial century. The Earth has existed for 45 million centuries but this is the first when one species, ours, can determine – for good or ill – the future of the entire biosphere.”

Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, in the opening remarks to his 2010 Reith Lectures, which you can download as a podcast or listen to online. Transcripts are also available from the Radio 4 pages.

7 June 2010: Our new exhibition The Royal Society: 350 Years of Science will take you on a journey through the Royal Society's beautiful buildings on Carlton House Terrace and through the varied and fascinating history of the Society. It includes the extraordinary 17th century predictions of Robert Boyle, pictured, among them flight, organ transplants, accurate geographic location, commercial agriculture and psychotropic drugs.

10 May: A piece of the apple tree believed to have inspired Newton to formulate the theory of gravity is going to experience free fall thanks to British-born astronaut Piers Sellers, who will be carrying the fragment along with a portrait of Newton on the next space shuttle flight.

21 March 2010: Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British biophysicist, physicist, chemist, biologist and X-ray crystallographer who played a key role in the elucidation of the structure of DNA but received little recognition before her untimely death. She is one of the ten most influential British women in the history of science according to a panel of leading female scientists and science historians assembled by the Royal Society to affirm its commitment to the advancement of women in science.

20 March 2010: Tate and the Royal Society bring together scientists and artists in a public symposium to imagine the social and psychological impacts of climate change and to exchange ideas and points of view. Speakers included Professor Brian Hoskins, Lucy Orta, Robert Bloomfield, Tomas Saraceno (whose 'Galaxies' is pictured above), Professor Steve Rayner, Agnes Denes and Professor Corinne Le Quéré.

This report distils two urgent messages. The first is the need to place science and innovation at the heart of the UK’s long-term strategy for economic growth. The second is the fierce competitive challenge we face from countries which are investing at a scale and speed that we may struggle to match.

As the Royal Society celebrates its 350th anniversary, we want to provoke a richer debate about the contribution that science and innovation will make to the UK’s future. If the right policy choices are made now, the UK can remain at the vanguard of international science and secure its prosperity throughout the scientific century.

9 March 2010: The Scientific Century draws on a year of evidence-gathering, analysis and consultation to express the challenges facing the UK and the world in the 21st century.

Auguries of innocence

London Underground celebrates 350 years of the Royal Society with poems reflecting on scientific thought and the changes it has wrought. Click to see all six poems with commentaries by leading scientists.

16 February: Microscopy was among the first interests of the Royal Society, and as part of its 350th anniversary celebrations London Zoo is putting on a show of colourful closeup images of plankton taken by Royal Society University Research Fellow Dr Richard Kirby.

“provocative, admirable and highly readable”

The Sunday Times reviews Seeing Further, January 24th 2010

...These men lived in a world of plague, fire, war, public execution, witchcraft, alchemy, religious hatred, political ferment and precarious patronage: but they made it a rule to discuss neither God nor politics, nor news "other than what concern'd our business of Philosophy".

As well as collecting uncritical observations of monstrous births and listening to investigations into the supposed consequences of a tarantula's bite, they read a paper from a certain Mr Isaac Newton of Cambridge, which showed that white light was in fact made up of the colours of the rainbow. This was a landmark moment in science, but as James Gleick – the first of many impressive contributors to this substantial celebration of 350 years of the Royal Society – reminds us, we recognise landmarks after we have passed them. At the time, the society's own experimenter, Robert Hooke, dismissed Newton's hypothesis as wrong. This snub drove the sulking Newton back to his obsession with alchemy and scripture.

There is a solid case for regarding Hooke and Newton and their peers as the makers of the modern world, but it might not have seemed so at the time, even to members of this not so exclusive club. Past fellows have included Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn, Edward Gibbon and Lord Byron, and Bill Bryson appropriately enhances his celebratory mix with contemporaries better known for pen than pipette.

Tim Radford reviews Seeing Further for the Guardian, January 9th 2010

25 February: Royal Mail today launches a series of 10 stamps commemorating past Fellows of the Royal Society and their enormous contributions to modern science. The BBC has also a slideshow of the new stamps with narration by Stephen Cox, Executive Secretary of the Society, introducing each of the scientists and explaining why they've been chosen.

30 November 2009: Trailblazing offers an interactive exploration of 350 years of science and the Royal Society. Its timeline stretches from the birth of modern science to the present day and includes some of the most important, influential and intriguing articles published by the Society, from a gruesome account of the first blood transfusion to Stephen Hawking's first published thoughts about black holes.