The Royal Society of Edinburgh, James Hutton, the Clerks of Penicuik and the Igneous Origin of Granite

2008 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. Suppl. 1-Suppl. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald B. Mclntyre
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Wavelength Region ◽  
Science Volume ◽  
Mount Everest ◽  
James Clerk Maxwell ◽  
Igneous Origin ◽  
The Family

Mauna Kea in Hawaii is the world’s tallest mountain — about 1000 m taller than Mount Everest (Science, volume 313, 22 September 2006, p. 1732). Near the summit, at an altitude of 4092 m, is the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) — the largest astronomical telescope designed to operate in the sub-millimetre wavelength region of the spectrum. In 1987 the JCMT was dedicated by HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and named for the physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). Sir John Dutton Clerk of Penicuik Bt, CBE, VRD, DL FRSE (1917-2002) represented the family.

scholarly journals A comparative study of the brains in pleuronectidae

1937 ◽  
Vol 122 (828) ◽  
pp. 308-343 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Medulla Oblongata ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Feeding Habits ◽  
Serial Sections ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
The Family ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

Part I. The Medulla Oblongata, And Its Variations Acoording To Diet And Feeding Habits In previous communications to this Society the relationship of the habits of feeding and diet to the form and pattern of the medulla oblongata has been described in the cyprinoids, clupeids, and gadoids (Evans, 1931, 1932, 1935). This research takes up a similar study of the brain of the Pleuronectidae. The expense has been borne by a grant from the Royal Society for which the author tenders his grateful thanks. It has seemed to be desirable to extend the observations to the fore- and mid-brain, as in some members of the family these present a very marked development. In order to elucidate some of the problems that arise I have also studied the brain of the eel, and some interesting conclusions have resulted. We find, as a result of examination by the naked eye and of serial sections, that we can divide the following species into four groups as follows: I. The sole, Solea vulgaris .

scholarly journals George Wallace Kenner, 16 November 1922 - 26 June 1978

1979 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 390-420 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Biographical Memoir ◽  
College Of Technology ◽  
The Family ◽  
Organic Chemist ◽  
Family Home ◽  
The University

George Wallace Kenner was born on 16 November 1922 at Sheffield, the younger son of a well known organic chemist James Kenner (1885-1974) who was at that time a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Sheffield. Details of the Kenner family’s origins are to be found in the biographical memoir of James Kenner ( Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society , 1975, 21, 389) and need not be repeated here. His mother, herself a chemist, I can recall only as a rather ebullient, talkative woman devoted to her two sons, Donald and George, in a family dominated by an aggressive father and kept very much to itself as a result. Before George was two years old the family left England for Australia where in late 1924 his father became Professor of Organic Chemistry (Pure and Applied) in the University of Sydney. Not surprisingly, we know little of George’s time there since the family returned to England in January 1928 when James Kenner was appointed Professor of Technological Chemistry at the Manchester College of Technology. The Kenners took up residence in the Manchester suburb of Withington where the family home remained (nominally at least) until James Kenner’s death in 1974.

scholarly journals Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer, 1858-1945

1956 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 237-247 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Medical Service ◽  
Early Education ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Family Resources ◽  
Army Medical ◽  
The Family ◽  
Foreign Member

Richard Pfeiffer, one of the pioneers of bacteriology and an assistant of Robert Koch, was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1928 at the age of 70. Twenty-seven years later inquiry revealed that he was still alive in 1945 behind the Iron Curtain, but that since then all trace of him had been lost. It is now known that he died on 15 September 1945 aged 87 years. Richard Pfeiffer was born on 27 March 1858 at Zduny, Posen, the eldest son of Otto Pfeiffer, a clergyman, and received his early education at Schweidnitz whither the family had removed. He passed out of the Gymnasium at the age of 17. He always had the ambition to study the natural sciences and medicine, but the family resources made a University career impossible. He was, however, fortunate in being accepted as a pupil in the exclusive ‘Pepiniere’ (afterwards the Kaiser Wilhelm Akademie). The purpose of this institution was to train boys to enter the Army Medical Service, and a number of its pupils had become leading bacteriologists. Education at the ‘Pepiniere’ was therefore a distinct step towards a career in medical science.

Philip Bruce White, 1891-1949

1950 ◽  
Vol 7 (19) ◽  
pp. 278-292
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Cholera Vibrio ◽  
Important Group ◽  
The Family ◽  
Paternal Grandmother ◽  
Poetic Justice ◽  
Close Family

The death of Philip Bruce White on 19 March 1949 brought to a premature close the career of an investigator of outstanding ability and a man of intriguing personality. By all bacteriologists, both of the present and future generations, his name will be linked with that of an important group of organisms, the Salmonella , but to those who worked alongside him it will also recall the memory of a warm-hearted colleague whose unconventional gaiety leavened the austerities of life in a research community. Bruce White, as he was invariably called by his workaday associates, was a scion of a very old and distinguished Scottish family, from which he derived a quiet but deep pride of race. Close family connexions included Sir Robert Philip, the eminent Professor of Tuberculosis in Edinburgh, and Professor J. C. Philip, the physical chemist who was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Through his paternal grandmother he traced direct descent from James Chalmers, founder of the Aberdeen Journa l, and James Bentley, Professor of Oriental Languages at Aberdeen University, who was a grand-nephew of Richard Bentley, the famous Master of Trinity, Cambridge. The Bentley connexion was always referred to in the family as the ‘English taint’, a phrase which Bruce White occasionally adapted to other uses with impish glee. His grandfather, Adam White, was a missionary in India who died of cholera at Purandur in the Bombay Presidency. There is no direct evidence that this circumstance influenced Bruce White’s choice of the cholera vibrio as a subject for investigation in later years, but his romantic temperament was undoubtedly conscious of the poetic justice of the choice and he was extremely gratified when a long-cherished desire to study epidemic cholera in India was fulfilled a few years before his death.

scholarly journals Stanley Melbourne Bruce - Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, 1883-1967

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 57-62
Keyword(s):  
Family Business ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Grammar School ◽  
Preparatory School ◽  
The Public ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of

The public life of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Prime Minister of Australia, a Viscount of the United Kingdom, a Fellow of the Royal Society, was one of the most paradoxical in the history of his native country. Bruce was born in Melbourne on 15 April 1883, of a well-to-do mercantile family. 1893 saw the collapse of a great land boom, the failure of some banks and an acute general depression. The family business, Paterson, Laing and Bruce, was in difficulties. Stanley Bruce’s father sold his mansion in the fashionable suburb of Toorak. Stanley himself had to leave his preparatory school—the fees were not available. His father, who appears to have been a singularly determined man, then proceeded to restore the fortunes of the business. In 1896 the young Stanley went to the well-known Melbourne Grammar School, where he was a most successful all-round student. It has been given to few boys at a great school to be not only captain of football, of cricket, of athletics, and of rowing, but also Senior Prefect (i.e. Captain) of the School.

scholarly journals Frederick George Donnan, 1870-1956

1957 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 23-39 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Heat Stroke ◽  
Medical Practitioner ◽  
Private Life ◽  
General Medical Practitioner ◽  
Long Period ◽  
The Family ◽  
University College

This biography is compiled from the Personal Record which Donnan left with the Royal Society, the assistance of numerous pupils and friends, and from the recollections of the writer extending over a long period. Donnan was born on 5 September 1870 at Colombo, Ceylon, and was the second of a family consisting of two brothers and four sisters. His father was William Donnan, a merchant of Belfast, and his mother’s maiden name was Jane Ross Turnley Liggate she also being a native of Northern Ireland. Donnan’s uncle, Captain James Donnan, was ‘master attendant’, Colombo and Inspector of the Ceylon Pearl Fisheries, who received a C.M.G. on his retirement; his son, Donnan’s cousin, was a regular soldier who spent most of his life in India, retiring with the rank of Colonel in 1913, rejoining the Army in 1914, and dying of heat stroke in Mesopotamia. Donnan’s brother, William Dunlop Donnan, was a general medical practitioner (M.D. of the Queens University) of Belfast till his death in 1941. Donnan returning from Ceylon at the age of 3 had no recollections of that country at all and this must be considered in making any appreciation of him as a devoted Ulster patriot. Donnan was a bachelor, so particular and generous mention must be made of his two sisters Jane and Leonora (Nora) who played such an important and unobtrusive part in his life. Jane was his secretary at University College and later looked after the I.C.I. Research Associates working there; after his retirement she carried on with his correspondence. In these later years her eyesight began to fail and steadily worsened. She died only three days before her brother and they were cremated on the same day. On duty she was most intelligent and efficient and in private life had all the family charm.

Edward Heron-Allen 1861-1943

1943 ◽  
Vol 4 (12) ◽  
pp. 447-454 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Postal Service ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Edward Iii ◽  
The Family ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
The Cross

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is a high human endeavour in whatever field it is employed. It may be undertaken in order to acquire learning or explore unknown fields, which may or may not prove of particular intellectual or practical service; but deliberate, zealous and patient endeavours are essential attributes for the attainment of worthy achievement. There are many such students who are not professionally engaged in scientific occupations; and the results of their enquiries are mostly recorded in publications of local and other societies, while a few are given wider recognition. In this band of independent workers who began to increase the sum of natural knowledge with little hope or expectation of attaining scientific distinction, the names of Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Sir John Evans and Sir Alfred Kempe come naturally to mind in connexion with the Royal Society in contemporary history. In his spirit and service, Heron-Allen may appropriately be said to belong to this group of investigators. He was a man of wide-ranging versatility, but whatever enterprise he took up he was never satisfied until with persistent energy he had probed to the fundamentals of it and placed the whole matter in historical sequence. Hence there were few subjects within his ambit upon which he did not, sooner or later, produce a series of papers or a book treating the topic comprehensively and where possible tracing it back to its origins. His spirit was ever that of the scientific enquirer and his method of approach guided by a strong historical sense. Edward Heron-Allen was born on 17 December 1861, the son of George Allen, who was head of the firm of Allen and Son, solicitors, of Soho, London, founded in 1780 by Emmanuel Allen. The family was of Staffordshire origin, where it is known to have been established in the reign of Edward III. A branch spelling the name Alleyne and living at Grantham in Lincolnshire sent out an offshoot to the Barbadoes, where it achieved no little distinction; while the English branch produced at least one man of science in the person of John Allen, M.D., F.R.S. (1660-1741). Ralph Allen, of Bath, was the founder of the cross-country postal service and the grandfather of Emmanuel Allen.

scholarly journals Alfred Young, 1873 - 1940

1941 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 761-778 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Large Family ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
The Family ◽  
University College ◽  
Edward Young ◽  
Justice Of The Peace

Alfred Young was born at Birchfield, Farnworth, near Widnes, Lancashire, on 16 April 1873. He died after a short illness on Sunday, 15 December 1940. He was the youngest son of Edward Young, a prosperous Liverpool merchant and a Justice of the Peace for the county. His father married twice and had a large family, eleven living to grow up. The two youngest sons of the two branches of the family rose to scientific distinction: Sydney Young, of the elder family, became the distinguished chemist of Owen’s College, Manchester, University College, Bristol, and finally, for many years, of Trinity College, Dublin. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in his thirty-sixth year and died in 1937. Alfred, who was fifteen years his junior, was elected Fellow in 1934, at the age of sixty, in recognition of his mathematical contributions to the algebra of invariants and the theory of groups, a work to which he had devoted over ten years of academic life followed by thirty years of leisure during his duties as Rector of a country parish. Recognition of his remarkable powers came late but swiftly: he was admitted to the Fellowship in the year when his name first came up for election. In 1879 the family moved to Bournemouth, and in due course the younger brothers went to school and later to a tutor, under whom Alfred suffered for his brain power, being the only boy considered worth keeping in.

scholarly journals Sesquicentennial of the presentation by James Clerk Maxwell of his paper "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" to the Royal Society of London

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 1560070
Author(s):  
Asghar Qadir ◽  
D. P. Mason
Keyword(s):  
Electromagnetic Field ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Dynamical Theory ◽  
Professional Life ◽  
Kinetic Theory Of Gases ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Major Work ◽  
James Clerk Maxwell ◽  
Electricity And Magnetism ◽  
Royal Society Of London

James Clerk Maxwell is generally regarded as the greatest contributor to the development of Physics in the time between Newton and Einstein. His most important contributions are the Kinetic Theory of Gases and Electromagnetism which is the unified theory of Electricity and Magnetism. Although his major work on Electromagnetism was published in 1865 it was read at a meeting of the Royal Society of London in 1864. The sesquicentennial of the theory correctly falls in 2014. In this article that event is celebrated. Parts of his early and professional life are described. Aspects of his many contributions are discussed but mainly we concentrate on his contributions through thermal and electromagnetic Physics.

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