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Newton’s apple tree

As we prepare for the launch of the Society’s new picture database there’s plenty to do in scanning and cataloguing collection imagery. Recently I’ve compiled descriptions of scientific portraits,...

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Shaggy dog stories

Sometimes the history which catches my eye can accumulate around related topics and at the moment I’m having a run of doggie anecdotes. There are classic scientific studies by Royal Society Fellows in...

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Shutterbugs

The Society has very rich image collections and recently I’ve been recording all manner of material that will end up on the Society’s picture database. Having recatalogued and rephotographed the...

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The ghost of a flea

Robert Hooke’s flea plate from Micrographia (1665) is one of the most reproduced and representative images of science at the Royal Society in the seventeenth century. However it’s not the only little...

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Psyche’s daughters

The recent Royal Society wiki edit-a-thon on ‘Women in Science’ was very successful in improving the records of 20th century scientists held in the online encyclopaedia. With honourable exceptions, the...

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Time travel through wormholes

This is getting ridiculous; I must stop writing about insects, it’s my third blog post in a row. One of my predecessors as Librarian, William Edward Shuckard (1803-1868) was actually fired by the Royal...

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Dining on ectoplasm

 The nights are growing darker and Christmas is the traditional time for a good ghost story. So gather round my crackling blog fire for a ghastly tale of skulduggery at the Royal Society, a spot of...

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The romantic Mr Edwards

Treasure on the high seas in the swashbuckling days of the eighteenth century wasn’t always the usual boring chests of Spanish Main gold. It might be scientific booty too, and that was certainly the...

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Mediterranean blue

It’s always nice to see an old friend, especially in an unexpected place. I was very pleased, therefore, and slightly surprised, to see a fine illustration of this little lizard in one of the Society’s...

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Nest eggs

The cartoonish notion of nicotine-scavenging sparrows is brought irresistibly to mind by a recent (very serious) Biology Letters paper ‘Incorporation of cigarette butts into nests reduces nest...

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The case of the missing Diamonds

One of the subjects I’m interested in is the presence or absence of portraits in the Society’s collections. I’ve written recently on lost seventeenth century oil paintings for the Society’s journal...

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The fault lines of fossil men

A file of correspondence can get you right into the heart of a scientific controversy from the past. That’s exactly where I am at the moment, reading letters from Percy Boswell and Louis Leakey, the...

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Charter Book history

An extraordinarily rare event is happening in Beijing today for one new Foreign Member of the Royal Society. It is difficult enough to achieve the honour of being elected to the Fellowship, but when...

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Fairytale of Aberystwyth

Christmas is the traditional time for fairytales, from Peter Pan to The Nutcracker, and I’ve just discovered another fairy-story from looking over examples of the Society’s botanical illustrations. The...

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Spot the difference or join the dots?

How did January begin for you? A bit liverish? Spots before the eyes, perhaps? I know the feeling well, but I’ve found some brand-new (well, old) spots to cheer me by reminding me of some very...

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Darkly bound

In recent blogs I’ve shown a lookalike Georgia O’Keeffe and a Damien Hirst prequel. Let’s go for the full Modernist set with some Fifties-style action painting.   Lead-tin alloy wire explosion, from...

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Hydra meets Handel

They have been the many-headed creatures of myth and the arch-enemies of those doughty Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  But real hydra, although they may not be much to look at, are far more interesting than...

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He sells sea-shells

Few important scientists get the full-blown literary treatment from a major writer of English. I think we can cheerfully ignore George Bernard Shaw’s version of Isaac Newton (In Good King Charles’s...

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Principia

It’s a happy day when I get the chance to blog about not one, but two pet topics. The manuscript thing you know about already, but I collect something even rarer – astronauts. I’m still a child of...

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Circus of science

The autumn television schedules seem to be filled with the usual Saturday variety shows. I’m still waiting for the scientific one where a competitive bunch of minor celebrities get to develop nuclear...

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