A new lease of life for 71 missing Fellows

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-125
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Occupational Group ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Missing Persons ◽  
National Biography ◽  
Oxford University Press

The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons , edited by Christine S. Nicholls, was published on 28 January 1993 by the Oxford University Press. The volume covers the lives of 1086 individuals who were omitted from the original D.N.B. and subsequent supplements, from 1885 to 1985. In the new volume I have traced 71 Fellows of the Royal Society: one of them, John Milne, takes on a double life after being accidentally duplicated from the 1901-1930 D.N.B. volume. The following list of these ‘missing’ Fellows gives their dates, the year of their election and their occupations, as indexed in the Dictionary , representing 13 of the 27 categories supplied. For convenience, the occupations have been keyed alphabetically (letters A-M) to a table (at the end of the list) showing the names in each occupational group.

Howard Florey - penicillin and after

1990 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-137 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Life ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Great Scientist ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
National University ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Oxford University Press

Trevor I. Williams, Howard Florey - penicillin and after . Oxford University Press, 1984. Pp. xiii + 404. £22.50. ISBN 0-19-858173-4. Soon after Florey’s death in 1978 there appeared an admirable biography by Gwyn Macfarlane ( Howard Florey - the making of a great scientist , Oxford, 1979). It gives a full account of Florey’s early life in Australia and England including the discovery and exploitation of penicillin, with shorter accounts of his later activities in relation to the creation of the Australian National University, his period as President of the Royal Society and his last post as Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford.

Essay review: Broad-minded biologist

1993 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-310
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Essay Review ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Mentally Retarded ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Oxford University Press

Christopher Sexton, The Seeds of Time: the Life of Sir Macfarlane Burnet . Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. 301, £19.95. ISBN 019 5532740 Those who knew Burnet only after he had become a successful and widely respected scientist will be surprised to learn from this biography that, when younger, he had been shy and diffident. There is, however, no room for doubt about this. Sexton quotes illustrative comments by others, passages from diaries, and the autobiography published in 1968. Shyness and diffidence were not familial traits: there are 15 Bumet(t)s in the DNB , and F.M. Burnet claims five Fellows of the Royal Society as collaterals. The shyness may have arisen from his mother’s preoccupation with the care of his mentally-retarded elder sister and the failure to make close contact with his father, a banker who had emigrated from Scotland to Australia in 1880. The young Burnet became an assiduous reader, with a keen interest in natural history and a special interest in beetles.

What happend to the Latin edition of Boyle's History of Cold?

1962 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-35
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Latin Version ◽  
Oxford University Press

In his Bibliography of the Honourable Robert Boyle (ist ed. 1932, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 1961), Dr Fulton has stated: ‘ The History of Cold seems never to have been translated into Latin.’ This conclusion is based on the fact that no Enghsh, American or Canadian library canvassed by Dr Fulton contained a copy of the Latin version, nor had it appeared for sale in any book catalogue seen in his survey. Yet there is ample evidence that a Latin translation of New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold (London, 1665 and 1683) was in fact made; that it was at least partly printed off; and that a completed edition may have been sold entire to a bookseller in Holland. The evidence for the possible existence of such an edition is to be found in the extensive correspondence between Henry Oldenburg, ‘publisher’ of the Enghsh edition of Cold and Secretary of the Royal Society, and Robert Boyle, who was mainly living in Oxford in the years 1664-66. Oldenburg’s side of the correspondence was printed by Thomas Birch in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London, 5 vols., 1744, 6 vols., 1772); Boyle’s scantier extant letters are to be found in the letterbooks of the Royal Society (MS. Bi).

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