The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 2

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2010

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society. Programme two begins in the coffee house Isaac Newton and the fellows of the early 18th century frequented. At the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, we learn how Newton's feud with the Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed tested the lines between government-funded research and public access. In the age of exploration, senior fellows accompany naval expeditions, such as Cook's expedition to Tahiti and subsequent discovery of Australia. International relations are fostered between scientists such as Benjamin Franklin, whose house in London serves as live-in lab and de facto American embassy. By the end of the century the President, Sir Joseph Banks, successfully embeds the Royal Society in the imperial bureaucratic hub of the new Somerset House. But while senior fellows concentrated on foreign fields, a more radical, dissident science and manufacturing base wrought the Industrial Revolution right under their noses.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for down learning the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program. The Royal Society Isaac Newton took over in 1703 was in some
0:17.4	trouble. As we heard yesterday, when Robert Hook died in that year it lost its
0:22.0	most devoted and ingenious fellow.
0:25.0	The rebuilding of the city of London after the Great Fire had brought prestige to some
0:28.4	fellows, notably Christopher Wren, and that had helped the society.
0:32.1	But that was almost 40 years ago. To make matters worse,
0:35.0	the Royal Society had come off badly in a plan to redevelop the Gresham College site.
0:39.7	Squeezed out of its digs, he had to find a new home.
0:42.6	But this is how it was in poor financial health,
0:44.8	and its future looked uncertain.
0:47.5	Yet that didn't stop the fellows continuing
0:49.4	with their investigations, nor did it put them off that coffee.
0:53.0	A gentleman by the name of Ralph Pauseby happened to attend a meeting of the Royal Society in June
0:58.0	1712.
0:59.0	Where I found Dr Douglas dissecting a dolphin,
1:02.0	lately caught in the Thames, where we're present the President,
1:05.2	Sir Isaac Newton, both the secretaries, the two professors from Oxford, Dr. Hallie and Kiel,
1:10.4	with others whose company we after enjoyed at the Grecian Coffee House.
1:15.0	Well, we're in the Grecian Coffee House, it's now the Deborah pub tucked down an alleyway off the strand.
1:21.0	In the company of Simon Shaffer, Professor of the History of
1:23.6	of Cambridge University and Michael Hunter Professor of History at
	...

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