The origins and foundation of the Royal Society of London

Abstract

Three hundred years ago, on Wednesday 28 November 1660, the Royal Society of London, although not then so entitled, was formally constituted at Gresham College in the City of London by ‘these persons following’, as the Journal Book of the Society records, namely, ‘The Lord Brouncker, Mr. Boyle, Mr. Bruce, Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paul Neile, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Petty, Mr. Ball, Mr. Rooke, Mr. Wren, Mr. Hill’, and ‘according to the Manner in other Countryes, where there were voluntary associations of men into Academies for the advancement of various parts of learning, So they might doe something answerable here for the promoting of Experimentall Philosophy.’ By a First Charter, granted by King Charles II on 15 July 1662, the Society became the Royal Society, and by a Second, dated 22 April 1663, the Royal Society of London for improving Natural Knowledge. The movement that led to these events originated in the time of Queen Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts: it was the English expression of those scientific interests and activities that were developing generally in western Europe and we therefore turn to that wider scene.