Wondrous, wondrous things

Spotted on the big G’s Newsblog.  I’m very very excited.  I’ve mentioned once or twice the Royal Society and its role in shaping modern science, in particular in reference to Robert Hooke and the recent discovery of his notes and minutes of the early Society’s meetings. Well, they’ve only gone and blown the bloody doors off their extensive online archives [until December - Ed].. all the way back to the first volume of Philosophical Transactions from 1665.. and it’s full of wondrous things.. 

A flavour of the contents from the Royal Society itself..

Spanning nearly 350 years of continuous publishing, the archive of nearly 60,000 articles includes ground-breaking research and discovery from many renowned scientists including: Bohr, Boyle, Bragg, Cajal, Cavendish, Chandrasekhar, Crick, Dalton, Darwin, Davy, Dirac, Faraday, Fermi, Fleming, Florey, Fox Talbot, Franklin (pictured), Halley, Hawking, Heisenberg, Herschel, Hodgkin, Hooke, Huxley, Joule, Kelvin, Krebs, Liebnitz, Linnaeus, Lister, Mantell, Marconi, Maxwell, Newton, Pauling, Pavlov, Pepys, Priestley, Raman, Rutherford, Schrodinger, Turing, van Leeuwenhoek, Volta, Watt, Wren, and many, many more influential science thinkers up to the present day.

And it’s all there.. in searchable databases.. and downloadable pdf files.. wow

Some highlights of my own brief foraging.. ”An Account of Mr. Benjamin Franklin’s Treatise, Lately Published, Intituled, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America” from Volume 47 - 1751 / 1752.

Edmund Halley’s account of the total solar eclipse over London in 1715, which he had published a map of in advance showing where the shadow of the moon would fall over England, utilising Newton’s Principia Mathematica first published, by the Royal Society, in 1687.

And another Edmund Halley, Isaac Newton collaboration from Volume 19 covering 1695/6 - “The True Theory of the Tides, Extracted from That Admired Treatise of Mr. Isaac Newton; Intituled, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica”

The recently rediscovered 16-folio manuscript of Isaac Newton’s alchemical notes.. downloadable in pdf format[scroll down].... did I say WOW!

And Isaac Newton’s first public appearance as a Natural Philosopher, his “New Theory about Light and Colors: Sent by the Author to the Publisher from Cambridge, Febr. 6. 1671/72”

And from the very first volume of Philosophical Transactions, page 3, The Ingenious Mr Hooke reports observing a spot on the biggest of the 3 obscurer belts of Jupiter.

As well as “An Account of Micrographia” also by Robert Hooke, his best known work, and also printed by the Royal Society.

More links of more recent note at the Guardian’s post on this.. Wondrous.

Adds Should have mentioned this earlier, but one of those eminent scientific thinkers listed above, Robert Boyle, was, of course, born at Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, on 25 January 1627, son of the first Earl of Cork, and was one of the founding members of the Royal Society and employer, co-experimenter and friend of Robert Hooke.  As mentioned in another previous post

Pete Baker @ 04:58 PM