Twelve Scientists Gather: The Royal Society Is Founded

Twelve men gathered after a lecture at Gresham College in London on November 28, 1660, and decided to form a society dedicated to the experimental investigation of nature. Among them were Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and John Wilkins, a clergyman with insatiable curiosity about everything from beekeeping to the possibility of life on the moon. Their club would become the Royal Society, the world's oldest continuously operating scientific institution. The group had been meeting informally for years, part of a network calling themselves the "Invisible College." What distinguished their approach was an insistence on empirical evidence and reproducible experiments. They rejected the authority of ancient texts in favor of direct observation. Their motto, "Nullius in verba" (take nobody's word for it), challenged the Aristotelian tradition that had dominated European intellectual life for two millennia. King Charles II granted a royal charter in 1662. The early Fellows threw themselves into an astonishing range of investigations: blood transfusions, the behavior of gases under pressure, insect anatomy, pendulum mechanics, and telescope improvement. Robert Hooke, the first curator of experiments, was expected to demonstrate three or four new experiments at every weekly meeting, a punishing schedule that nonetheless produced groundbreaking work in microscopy and elasticity. The Royal Society published Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica" in 1687, arguably the most important scientific work ever written. Over the centuries, its Fellows included Darwin, Faraday, Hawking, and hundreds of others who shaped the modern world. The decision made by twelve curious men in a London college room launched an institution that helped transform science from a gentleman's hobby into the engine of human progress.