Copley Medal Concepts

The Age of Wonder

by Richard Holmes · 15 Jan 2008 · 778pp · 227,196 words

of Messier, Pierre Laplace and Lalande, who had hitherto dominated European astronomy. In fact Banks’s enthusiasm had rather got the better of him. The Copley Medal and the fellowship election had to go through the Society’s plodding bureaucratic procedures, which took another six months. Maskelyne used the interval to write

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be similar to Dr Charles’s.62 He received no honours (except being made ‘Baron of the Cinque Ports’), no prize, no pension and no Copley Medal from the Royal Society, but he was at least elected a Fellow. Two months after the flight he revisited Dover in sober and thoughtful mood

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him to return to England and give a course of lectures on Poetry at the Royal Institution. Davy returned to London to be awarded the Copley Medal by Banks (for some humdrum work on agricultural chemistry), and elected to the Council of the Royal Society. He was also invited to give the

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written up for the Society’s Philosophical Transactions in 1801.3 Thanks to Banks, Cooper was elected to the Royal Society and awarded the famous Copley Medal for this work, at the age of thirty-three. Cooper’s students would include John Keats at Guy’s Hospital in 1814. Other medical men

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.’51 In September 1803 Banks received a confidential report from the chemist Richard Chenevix, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the recipient of the Copley Medal in 1803, who was on a scientific tour of German cities. Writing from Leipzig, Chenevix noted that the ‘most interesting’ work at Jena was being

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, and voted money for Charles Babbage’s first prototype of his famous ‘difference engine’, or calculating machine. In 1821 he made sure that the annual Copley Medal was awarded to young Herschel for his work on polarised light (as Banks had once assured it to his father for discovering Uranus). The award

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baronet in time to attend Queen Victoria’s coronation in Westminster Abbey. Sir John Herschel was elected President of the Royal Society, awarded a second Copley Medal, and by the 1850s was recognised as the leading public scientist of mid-Victorian England. His kindly face, encircled by a sunlike corona of white

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-40; supports Wollaston for presidency of Royal Society, 397-8; devises difference engines (calculating machines), 399, 437-8; and Davy’s speech on award of Copley Medal to John Herschel, 400; supports Faraday’s election to Royal Society Fellowship, 402; Continental tour with John Herschel, 405-6; co-founds Royal Astronomical Society

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in Herschel, 60, 62; writes to Herschel on Pole Star, 87; and Herschel’s discovery of Uranus, 98-101, 103, 125; entertains Herschel, 101; presents Copley Medal to Herschel, 105; supports Herschel against detractors, 109; tests Herschel’s telescope, 109; introduces Herschel to George III, 110; hears of French aerial experiments, 125

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; elected Fellow of Royal Society, 292; salary and payments, 292; and death of Gregory Watt, 293; and idea of soul, 294; awarded Royal Society’s Copley Medal, 295; invites Coleridge to lecture at Royal Institution, 295, 297, 299; visits Lake District, 295; fly-fishing and angling, 297, 337, 346, 349-60, 356

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of Astronomical Society, 384; career, 387-90; misgivings over Davy’s character, 397-8, 402; supports Wollaston for presidency of Royal Society, 397-8; awarded Copley Medals, 399-400, 464; Davy acknowledges in presidential speech to Royal Society, 399; Continental tour with Babbage, 405-6; Davy recommends for Athenaeum club, 405; favours

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, 43; Banks elected President, 54-5; moves to Somerset House, 55; and Herschel’s discovery of Uranus, 98-100; Herschel elected to membership and awarded Copley Medal, 102-3, 105; members sceptical of Herschel’s accomplishments, 108; and early ballooning, 133, 134, 147, 155; elects Jeffries to Fellowship, 152-3; adopts Caroline

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Herschel’s Star Catalogue, 194; and scientific observation, 249; Beddoes applies to for financial support, 251-2; awards Copley Medal to Davy, 295; Davy delivers Bakerian Lectures, 295-9, 359; medical scientists in, 306-7; Davy reports to on safety-lamp investigation, 363-5; Davy

Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

by Matthew Cobb · 6 Jul 2015 · 608pp · 150,324 words

has very far-reaching implications for the general science of biology’.26 In 1945, the Royal Society of London followed suit and awarded Avery the Copley Medal, again primarily for his microbiological work but with a powerful recognition of the importance of the 1944 paper: ‘the interest and importance of this work

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reactions in Neurospora’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 27, 1941, pp. 499–506. Bearn, A. G., ‘Oswald T. Avery and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society’, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 39, 1996, pp. 550–5. Beckwith, J., ‘The operon as paradigm: Normal science and the

The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America

by Steven Johnson · 26 Dec 2008 · 200pp · 60,987 words

was among the most accomplished men of his generation, rivaled only by Franklin in the diversity of his interests and influence. He had won the Copley Medal (the Nobel Prize of its day) for his experiments on various gases in his late thirties, and published close to five hundred books and pamphlets

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, the Honest Whigs were abuzz with Priestley’s discovery. Negotiations ensued within the Royal Society and by November the Society voted to award him the Copley Medal, the most prestigious scientific prize of its day, “on account of the many curious and useful Experiments contained in his observations on different kinds of

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of them, including hydrogen chloride, ammonia, sulfur dioxide, and silicon fluoride. But his most celebrated—and contested—discovery would come nearly two years after the Copley Medal. Priestley’s meteoric rise to prominence as a scientist—along with his political writings—had attracted the attention of William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, former

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, such as oxygen, nitrogen, mercury, and hydrogen. A new science needs its origin stories, and Priestley had undeniably been there at the beginning. Despite the Copley Medal and Franklin’s enthusiasm, the mint in the glass faded into the background. In time, it would mark the origin of a new science, too

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, had nothing but contempt for dissenters, and he took the publication of The Corruptions as an opportunity to challenge Priestley’s general reputation, dismissing his Copley Medal as the result of a few “lucky” discoveries and extracting a long list of mangled quotations and circular arguments from Priestley’s oeuvre. Priestley soon

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-98. Beerling, D. J. The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth’s History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Bektas, M. Yakup, and M. Crosland. “The Copley Medal: The Establishment of a Reward System in the Royal Society, 1731-1839.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 46 (1992): 43-76

Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey

by Rachel Hewitt · 6 Jul 2011 · 595pp · 162,258 words

. He read his account before the Royal Society between 21 April and 16 June 1785, and was delighted to find himself the recipient of the Copley Medal, the Society’s highest accolade, for his efforts. And the fame that Roy had enjoyed during the baseline measurement continued. Newspapers reported the promotion of

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these words, the Ordnance Survey was born. SHOFTLY BEFORE THE Ordnance Survey’s foundation in 1791, Joseph Banks had presented the Royal Society’s prestigious Copley Medal to Major James Rennell, who had made an accurate map of Bengal, based on a trigonometrical survey. Banks’s presentation speech was bittersweet: ‘I should

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godson and sometime assistant was a man called Thomas Vincent Reynolds, to whom he had left his most prized possessions, including his military commissions, his Copley Medal, a watch and a miniature portrait of Roy by Maria Cosway. In that same year, after Britain’s entry into the French Revolutionary Wars, the

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, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; see also isopleths Conway, Henry Seymour, 1 Cook, Captain James, 1 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 1; De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 1 Copley Medal, 1, 2, 3 copper-plate engraving, 1 Cornwall, Ordnance Survey maps and surveys of, 1 Cornwallis, Charles, 1st Marquess: appointed Master-General of Board of

Miracle Cure

by William Rosen · 14 Apr 2017 · 515pp · 117,501 words

discoveries were exemplary science, just as she was an exemplary scientist. In addition to the Nobel Prize, she was awarded the Order of Merit, the Copley Medal, the annual medal of the Royal Society, and has appeared not once, but twice, on British stamps.* She derived the structure of some of the

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reason that we started working on it. . . .” For others, though, Florey included, recognition was the thing. Scientists dream of the undying fame that comes with Copley Medals and Nobel Prizes, but even at more modest levels, authoring a major paper is the key to academic status and even employment. This was true

The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution

by Henry Schlesinger · 16 Mar 2010 · 336pp · 92,056 words

Yale, along with the College of William and Mary, soon followed. The Royal Society, which had once laughed at his theories, presented him with the Copley Medal and membership. “The Tatler [an early colonial magazine intended to “…pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation” to lead its readers toward better

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correspondence. Volta’s instruments were in wide use among the Society’s members and he had, in fact, received the Society’s highest honor, the Copley Medal, a few years earlier. A second letter soon followed that included a 5,000-word account, with diagrams. In this second letter, Volta compared his

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rods attached to a charged Leyden jar, Forster’s legs, mouth, and rectum clenched and contorted. Aldini’s efforts earned him the Royal Society’s Copley Medal; to his credit, he never actually claimed to reanimate the dead, restricting his comments to more scientific phrases such as “command the vital powers” and

Longitude

by Dava Sobel · 1 Jan 1995 · 128pp · 38,963 words

of the society insisted that Harrison leave his workbench long enough to accept the Copley Gold Medal on November 30, 1749. (Later recipients of the Copley Medal include Benjamin Franklin, Henry Cavendish, Joseph Priestley, Captain James Cook, Ernest Rutherford, and Albert Einstein.) Harrison’s Royal Society supporters eventually followed the medal, which

Energy: A Human History

by Richard Rhodes · 28 May 2018 · 653pp · 155,847 words

split the sky in storms. For such “discoveries in electricity,” the Royal Society of London elected Franklin to membership in 1753 and awarded him the Copley Medal, its highest honor. Cutaway view of a Leyden jar, the first battery. Inner and outer foils, separated by nonconducting glass of jar, store static electricity

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, And on the Mannner of Obtaining Them in Large Quantities (Beddoes and Watt), 116 Constitution, 137 Continental Congress, 59 Copenhagen, 177 Copenhagen, University of, 178 Copley Medal, 170, 171 copper, 60, 98, 110, 121, 175, 178, 183–84, 189 Cornwall, 41 cotton, 82, 96, 123, 167 Crawshay, Richard, 75, 76 Cromwell, Oliver

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

by Robert Kanigel · 25 Apr 2016

with an ugly black eye for his trouble. Later that year, the Royal Society notified him that he was to receive its highest honor, the Copley Medal. “Now I know that I must be pretty near the end,” he told Snow. “When people hurry up to give you honorific things there is

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most of my spare time at his bedside.” It was soon. Hardy died on December 1, 1947, the day he was to be presented the Copley Medal. He left his substantial savings and the royalties of his books, once having provided for his sister, to the London Mathematical Society. “His loss,” wrote

Civilization: The West and the Rest

by Niall Ferguson · 28 Feb 2011 · 790pp · 150,875 words

Nature and Advantage of a Rifled Barrel Piece’, which he read before the Royal Society in 1747 – the year he was awarded the Society’s Copley Medal – recommended that bullets should be egg-shaped and gun barrels rifled. The paper’s conclusion showed how well Robins appreciated the strategic as well as

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170–71 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 155, 156 Social Contract 78, 151–2 Royal Observatory, Greenwich 70 Royal Society of London 69–70, 80, 83, 84 Copley Medal 84 Ruiz-Linares, Andrés 133 Russia/Soviet Union 7, 83, 156, 303 economic growth 231–2 expansion of 144 exploration of 36 France and 160