Page 44 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

Ideas & Inventions / Royal Society

Five founder members of the Royal Society

Remarkable thinkers dedicated to “promoting Physico-Mathematicall Experimental Learning”

Robert Boyle (1627–91)
William Brouncker (1620–84)
Until recently, only one of the Society’s Brouncker, the Society’s first president, is now virtually
founding Fellows was celebrated as unknown. An Irish aristocrat, his two intellectual
a scientific hero: Robert Boyle. Boyle was passions were mathematics and music, and he
a wealthy Irish aristocrat who is famous devised some elegant methods of alge-
for inventing the air pump, formulating a braic manipulation. However, the
law about gases and outlining a corpus- Fellows elected him for his royalist
cular model of chemistry. Boyle explored affiliations rather than his scholarly
the natural world in order to demonstrate eminence, and after some bitter
the glory of God. A pious yet troubled disputes with Hooke and others,
scholar, his only Brouncker was squeezed out of
intimate office 15 years later.
relationship
was with
his older
sister.

Christopher Wren Thomas Willis (1621–75)
(1632–1723) Willis studied and practised medicine
at Oxford, where he became a
A gifted draughtsman, Wren’s modern
fame as an architect has overshadowed professor. A skilled neuro-anatomist
his closely related passion for scientific and an early convert to William Harvey’s
experiment and astronomy. He designed circulatory model, Willis established
the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and the dominant role of the brain and
was professor of astronomy at Gresham nervous system in human behaviour.
College, London at just 25. One of the He is now increasingly seen as an
youngest and keenest original Fellows, he important scientific innovator.
served as president from 1680 to 1682. Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
Hooke was the Royal Society’s first
experimental curator. Formerly margin-
alised, this talented yet cantankerous
man is now recognised as a key contribu-
tor to both theoretical and practical
science. Especially renowned for his law
of elasticity and his stunning images of
microscopic insects and plants, Hooke
built the first vacuum pumps and
developed many other fine instruments, GETTY/ BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY/GETTY/AKG IMAGES
as well as playing a key role in rebuilding
London after the Great Fire.
No portraits of Hooke exist so we’ve
shown an illustration of a mite, a
crab-like insect and a ‘bookworm’ from
his book, Micrographia

44 The Story of Science & Technology