Royal Society of Edinburgh Totally Explained

Everything about The Royal Society Of Edinburgh totally explained

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. The membership consists of over 1400 peer-elected fellows, who are known as Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, denoted FRSE in official titles. It provides annual grants totalling over half a million pounds for research and entrepreneurship. The Society organises public lectures and promotes the sciences in schools throughout Scotland.
It covers a broader selection of fields than the Royal Society of London including literature and history.

History

At the start of the eighteenth century, Edinburgh's intellectual climate fostered many clubs and societies (see Scottish Enlightenment). Though there were several that treated the arts, sciences and medicine, the most prestigious was the Philosophical Society which was founded in 1738. With the help of University of Edinburgh professors like Joseph Black, William Cullen and John Walker, this society transformed itself into the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783 and in 1786 it issued the first edition of its new journal Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .
   As the end of the century drew near, the younger members like Sir James Hall embraced Lavoisier's new nomenclature and the members split over the practical and theoretical objectives of the society. This resulted in the founding of the Wernerian Society (1808-1858), a parallel organisation that focused more upon natural history and scientific research that could be used to improve Scotland's weak agricultural and industrial base. Under the leadership of Prof. Robert Jameson, the Wernerians first founded Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society (1808-1821) and then the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (1822), thereby diverting the output of the Royal Society's Transactions. Thus, for the first four decades of the nineteenth century, the RSE's members published brilliant articles in two different journals. By the 1850s, Jameson and his partner Sir David Brewster lost their influence and the society once again could unify its membership under one journal.
   During the nineteenth century the society produced many scientists whose ideas laid the foundation of the modern sciences. From the twentieth century onward, the society functioned not only as focal point for Scotland's eminent scientists, but also the arts and humanities. It still exists today and continues to promote original research in Scotland.
   The current president is the mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah.

Awards

Notable members

Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, denoted by the use of the initialism FRSE in official titles, have included:

Alexander Aitken, New Zealand mathematician

Jack Allen, Canadian physicist who helped discover the superfluid phase of matter in 1937 using liquid helium, Professor of Physics at the University of St Andrews

Sir William Eric Kinloch Anderson, Provost of Eton College

John Arbuthnott, 16th Viscount of Arbuthnott, Scottish soldier and businessman

Struther Arnott, Scottish molecular biologist and Vice-chancellor of the University of St Andrews

Robert Bald, surveyor and mining engineer

Sir Derek Barton, chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Sir James W. Black, Scottish pharmacologist who invented Propranolol, synthesised Cimetidine, and received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988

Robert Black, Queen's Counsel, Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh

Norman Borlaug, American agricultural scientist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, father of the Green Revolution

Sarah Broadie, philosopher specialising in metaphysics and ethics, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews

John Campbell Brown, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow

Sir Samuel Brown, engineer and suspension bridge pioneer

Sir Kenneth Calman, Scottish doctor, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland then England, Vice-chancellor of Durham University; Chancellor of Glasgow University

Roger Cowley, physicist, Professorof Experimental Philosophy at Oxford

Cyril Offord

Tom Devine

Kenneth Dover

Professor Sir David Edward

James Alfred Ewing, Scottish physicist and engineer, discoverer of hysteresis, Vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh

Ian Fells

John Fincham

James David Forbes

Alexander Gray, Scottish economist, translator and poet, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh

William Michael Herbert Greaves

John Currie Gunn

James E. Talmage, Geologist, Chemist, prolific author (see Jesus the Christ (book)), President of the University of Utah, Apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Peter Higgs

Right Reverend Richard Holloway, writer, broadcaster, Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church

James Hutton, regarded as the founder of modern geology

John Mackintosh Howie

John Jamieson

Fleeming Jenkin

Mstislav Keldysh

Cargill Gilston Knott

Chris J. Leaver, Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford

Sir Neil MacCormick, Regius Professor of Public Law at the University of Edinburgh and Vice-president of the Scottish National Party

Neil Mackie, Scottish tenor, Head of Vocal Studies at the Royal College of Music

Aubrey Manning, English zoologist and broadcaster, Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh

James Napier, Scottish writer

John Playfair, Scottish mathematician and physicist, Professor of Mathematics and the Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh

Lyon Playfair, 1st Baron Playfair

Juda Hirsch Quastel

John Randall, physicist

Archie Roy, Professor of astronomy at the University of Glasgow and former president of the Society for Psychical Research

Sir Walter Scott, romantic and historical novelist (Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and others)

Richard Sillitto

John Sinclair, writer

Adam Smith, classical economist; philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment

Alexander McCall Smith, Rhodesia-born Scottish novelist (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Sunday Philosophy Club, 44 Scotland Street and others), Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh

Christopher Smout

Stewart Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood, Scottish Academic who served as the Vice-Chancellor and Principle for the University of Edinburgh

Peter Guthrie Tait

George Thomson, Baron Thomson of Monifieth, Labour Party minister and European Commissioner

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Irish-Scottish mathematical physicist and engineer

Ronald Pearson Tripp, paleontologist

Colin Vincent

Conrad Hal Waddington

James Watt, Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the Industrial Revolution

John Wishart (statistician)

Charles W. J. Withers

Ronald Selby Wright, minister of the Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh

Crispin Wright

Hideki Yukawa, Japanese theoretical physicist who predicted the pion and K-capture, the first Japanese to win a Nobel Prize

Derick Thompson, Gaelic poet, academic, president of the Scottish Poetry LibraryFurther Information

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