The Royal Society and Ireland . II
In a previous article (i) a short account was given of the life of William Molyneux F.R.S. (1656-1698), who was, without doubt, the most able of the Irish scientists of the late seventeenth century. He was the founder of the Dublin Philosophical Society which held its first official meeting in October 1683, and ensured that it soon established and maintained close links with the Royal Society of London. Although it never numbered more than forty persons among its membership, the Dublin Society laid the foundation upon which Irish scientists of later generations were able to build, and the establishment of the Royal Dublin Society in 1731 and of the Royal Irish Academy in 1785 is evidence of its lasting influence on the scientific life of eighteenthcentury Ireland. The constitution and organization of the Dublin group was closely modelled on that of the Royal Society (2), and its original style o f ‘The Dublin Society for the improving of naturall knowledge, Mathematicks and Mechanicks’ shows that it shared the aims and interests of its English counterpart. In November 1684, Sir William Petty, the Society’s first President, drew up a series of ‘advertisements. . . containing some proposals for modelling . . . future progress’. These were so well approved of ‘that they were readily submitted to by the whole company’ (3)