Harold Brewer Hartley
Biographic Data
| ID | 9266736 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Harold Brewer Hartley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Harold Brewer |
| FAMILY NAME | Hartley |
| SIGNATURE | HARTLEY H B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Keeper of the Library, Science Museum, London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 151 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 131 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1949 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K. G., F. R. S
Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K. G. was elected into the Royal Society on 26 November 1914 under Statute 12; his proposer was the then President, Sir William Crookes. His citation makes no mention of his ability as a naturalist or of his genius in winning the confidence of wild creatures. I met him first as Visitor of my College, Balliol, and in 19271 took my wife and son Christopher to have tea with him at Fallodon, where his little estate and his …
Edmond Halley, F. R. S., Hydrologist Extraordinary
EDMOND HALLEY (1656-1742) was a versatile genius, primarily known as a pioneer in astronomy, geophysics and mathematics. He was also interested in history, navigation, archaeology and civil engineering. He wrote poems in Latin and translated ancient works on geometry from Greek and Arabic texts. He was the founder of population and actuarial statistics, and, in my opinion, he was one of the co-founders of experimental hydrology. It is surprising …
James Watt, engineer and man of science
IN the light of the controversy that has raged since the eighteenth century about the effects on British technological innovation of Watt’s patent for his improved steam-engine, granted in 1769 and continued by Act of Parliament until 1800, it is interesting to see what the engineer had to say in his own defence in July 1795 when he was preparing the heads of argument for a case in Chancery to decide whether a Scire Facias should be allowed to is…
The autobiography of John Wallis, F. R. S
In old age John Wallis (1616-1703) wrote an autobiography in response to the repeated requests of his friend Thomas Smith (1638-1710). Apart from the purely biographical interest, it is a valuable historical source for the origins of the Royal Society and for the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in the 1640s. Besides the final version, excerpts of which have often been quoted, there still exists Wallis’s first draft of this autobiography—though…
Sir Richard Arkwright and his patent granted in 1769
FOR a person to rise from being a poor barber in a small town to a wealthy Knight of the Realm and Lord Lieutenant of the County of Derby suggests that he must have possessed some ability, even if it was only using other people’s ideas. Sir Richard Arkwright’s rise to riches and fame started with his spinning patent taken out in 1769. His fortune aroused considerable envy and hostility at the time, partly because people thought he had copied the …
Bibliography of recent books and articles dealing with the history of the Royal Society
Each number of Notes and Records contains a short bibliography of books and articles dealing with the history of the Royal Society or its Fellows which have been noted since the publication of the last number. If Fellows would be good enough to draw the Editor’s attention to omissions these would be added to the list in the next issue. Books Badash, L. (Editor). Rutherford and Boltwood: letters on radioactivity. (Yale studies in the History of Sc…
Thomas Young’s lectures at the Royal Institution
Thomas Young, F. R. S. (1773-1829) achieved renown not only for the original contributions which he made to physics but also, to a lesser extent, for his work in the fields of hieroglyphics, physiology and classics. Yet he was a professional scientist for only two years (1802-1803), when he held the chair of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution. In this paper Young’s progress during these two years will be examined, firstly from a biograph…
The Jamaican observatories of Colin Campbell, F. R. S. and Alexander Macfarlane, F. R. S
IN the spring of 1731 Colin Campbell, F. R. S., sailed from Britain to his home at Black-River, Jamaica, where his father was a colonial merchant and landowner. He took with him a substantial collection of astronomical instruments, intending to found an observatory on the island. About ten years later he sold the instruments to a fellow Scot, Alexander Macfarlane, F. R. S., who set them up in a specially built house and observatory in Kingston, J…
Conversaziones, 1969
CONVERSAZIONES were held this year on 8 May and 26 June. At the first conversazione there were twenty exhibits and two films were shown. High voltage insulators of the kind used in very large numbers by the Central Electricity Generating Board on the electricity grid transmission network, have been known to fail in areas of heavy atmospheric pollution. If the surface of a polluted insulator becomes damp a leakage current will flow over the insula…
The friendship of John Smeaton, F. R. S., with Henry Hindley, instrument and clockmaker of York and the development of Equatorial mounting telescopes
Henry Hindley's name can occur in a whole variety of connexions. For instance an interesting pyrometer of his making formed a part of King George Ill’s Kew Collection and may now be seen in the Science Museum; in Kingston upon Hull, Hindley was involved in the design of a beamless atmospheric (steam) engine which lifted water for the town’s water supply. Mention of his many other interests need not, however, be made here, for they are not apposit…
The Society's notes
Obituary (continued from Vol. 24, p. 169) Election 1968
Anniversary Dinner 1969. Speech by Professor H. B. G. Casimir at the Anniversary Dinner, The Dorchester, 1 December 1969
I consider it a great privilege to be given this opportunity to express my admiration for the Royal Society. That we are here on this particular evening is already a manifestation of its spirit of independence, for, as one of my friends has pointed out to me, the rules in its Charter of 1662 concerning what to do when St Andrews day falls on a Sunday deviate boldly from ecclesiastic practice. But why St Andrews day? About St Andrew the New Testam…
Richard Bradley's Relationship With Sir Hans Sloane
Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) is remembered more for his activities in the spheres of science and medicine than for his original contributions to these fields. His large treatise on the natural history of Jamaica (2 vols., 1707- 1725) and other writings were useful additions to the scientific literature, but they were overshadowed by his activities as President of both the Royal Society (1727-1741) and the Royal College of Physicians (1719-1735) an…
The ‘plain story’ of James Watt. The Wilkins Lecture, 1969
IN 1648, John Wilkins, who had just become Warden of Wadham and who was later to be the first Secretary of the Society, published his Mathematical Magick: or, the Wonders that may he performed by Mechanical Geometry; and in his Address to the Reader he explained: I have now ventured forth this discourse; wherein besides the great delight and pleasure (which every rational Reader must needs find in such notions as carry with them their own evidenc…
Friendship and influence - Martinus Van Marum, F. R. S
In 1798, after more than ten years of an involved, campaign, Martinus van Marum, Secretary of the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (Dutch Society of Sciences), at last achieved his election as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. This note, after briefly introducing van Marum in time and place, relates the progress of that campaign
William Prout and Barometry
IN 1830 John Davy introduced his medical friend William Prout to the Scottish physicist James Forbes as ‘one of the very few men now remaining in England devoted to scientific pursuits & distinguished by his attainments’ (1). Forbes subsequently recorded in his journal under the heading Dr. Prout: In the course [of] his experiments (I do not know in particular what), he was led to suspect the accuracy of Gay-Lussac’s announcement of the equable e…
The Society's notes
Obituary (continued from Vol. 24, p. 323) Award of Medals 1969 Election of Fellows 1969
The X-Club. A social network of science in late-Victorian England
AMONG the more significant features of nineteenth-century British science was the emergence of social and professional networks which helped to shape or influence the course of scientific activity. By and large, the most conspicuous arbiters of scientific values were the learned societies, the British Association and the universities. These formal bodies, however, almost always reflected the attitudes and assumptions of small, informal, often obs…
William Prout, M.D., F. R. S., Physician And Chemist (1785-1850)
WILLIAM PROUT was born in a farm which adjoined the small village of Horton in Gloucestershire, where his family had been established for several generations. He proved to be a shining example of that phenomenon of the early nineteenth century, namely, the bright boy of humble origin who was educated by his own exertions and became an outstanding figure in the newly emerging class of semi-professional scientists. Under the denomination of Natural…
Thomas Thomson's activities in Edinburgh, 1791-1811
THE standard accounts of Thomas Thomson (1) pay little attention to the pre-1811 period—what may be referred to as his Edinburgh period—and reiterate only the standard obituary material in the main. Although it is still not possible to give a full account of his Edinburgh period, enough new material has come to light that may provide the incentive for further study of these years. Thomas Thomson was born in Crieff, Perthshire, in 1773 and, after …
James Cook bicentenary celebrations in New Zealand
THE enthusiasm with which the Government and people of New Zealand celebrated the bicentennial of the Endeavour's landfall and the first landing of Europeans on 9 October 1769, at the site where the City of Gisborne now stands, has firmly established James Cook as the outstanding national hero in the history of this young country. In the capital city of Wellington, national celebration of the bicentenary began on 3 October when the Prime Minister…
Watt's expansive principle in the work of Sadi Carnot and Nicolas Clément
I mentioned to you a method of still doubling the effect of the steam, and that tolerably easy, by using the power of steam rushing into a vacuum, at present lost... it is peculiarly applicable to wheel-engines, and may supply the want of a condenser where force of steam is only used; for, open one of the steam-valves, and admit steam until one-fourth of the distance between it and the next valve is filled with steam; shut the valve, the steam wi…
Note on a further portrait of James Short, F. R. S
The portrait of James Short (1710-1768, F.R.S. 1737) in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, was illustrated and discussed in a recent article in this journal (1). As a result of Turner’s paper another portrait of James Short has been found; these two likenesses together with the chalk and pencil drawing by the Earl of Buchan were shown side by side at the bicentenary exhibition ‘James Short and his Telescopes’ held at the Royal Scottish…
A Royal Society appointment with Venus in 1769
A little over two hundred years ago a number of serious and learned men in Copenhagen, London, Paris, St Petersbourg, Stockholm and elsewhere, men who were academicians, Fellows of the Royal Society, Lords of the Admiralty, politicians and the like, had been thinking seriously and learnedly about the behaviour of Venus, not, of course, about Venus as represented coldly and chastely by the marble statues being imported from Italy or more warmly in…
James Short, F. R. S., and his contribution to the construction of reflecting telescopes
JAMES SHORT (1710-1768, F. R. S. 1737), the Scottish telescope-maker who achieved such eminence that he was at one time a favoured candidate for the office o f Astronomer Royal, was born in Edinburgh on 10 June 1710. In the entry of his baptism in the Edinburgh Parish Register the parents are described as ‘William Short, Wright, Burgess and Margaret Grierson, his spouse’. In 1720, James, now an orphan, was sent to Heriot’s Hospital, a school for …
Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan’
Newtonian scholars have long been aware of a set of draft Scholia to Propositions IV to IX of Book III of the Principia (2). These were composed in the 1690’s, as part of an unimplemented plan for a second edition of the work. Since they describe supposed anticipations of Newton’s doctrines in the thought of Graeco-Roman antiquity, they have become known as the ‘classical’ Scholia (3). The analogies and parallels drawn in them are so strained, as…
Watt's expansive principle in the work of Sadi Carnot and Nicolas Clément
I mentioned to you a method of still doubling the effect of the steam, and that tolerably easy, by using the power of steam rushing into a vacuum, at present lost... it is peculiarly applicable to wheel-engines, and may supply the want of a condenser where force of steam is only used; for, open one of the steam-valves, and admit steam until one-fourth of the distance between it and the next valve is filled with steam; shut the valve, the steam wi…
The Berzelius centenary celebrations
ON 20 to 22 September 1948 forty representatives of foreign learned societies and universities were in Stockholm at the invitation of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Agriculture, the Caroline Institute and the Swedish Medical Association to join with them in their Commemoration of Jons Jakob Berzelius, who died on 7 August 1848. The opening meeting on 20 September was in the Town Hall, one of Stockholm’s most beautiful …
Richard Owen and William Clift
The life of Richard Owen by his grandson1 contains on page 258 the JL following letter from Faraday. Owen’s reply to it I found among some letters which Faraday had kept in a volume of lithograph portraits of the Honorary Members of the Ipswich Museum. ‘ Dear Owen, ‘ Who cares for bipeds or quadrupeds ? They are as common as discontent, but I think even you may be interested in a triped which I happen to possess just now, and which, if you care f…
The Ramsay Centenary
THE Ramsay Centenary revived many memories of the excitement produced by the announcement of the discovery of argon at the British Association meeting at Oxford in August 1894, and of the incredulity freely expressed in certain quarters about the discovery during the interval before the joint paper by Rayleigh and Ramsay was read to the Royal Society in January 1895, when the critics were silenced. The isolation of the inert gases was one of the …
Charles Lyell, F. R. S. (1797-1875)
Charles Lyell was born on 14 November, 1797, at Kinnordy, the family estate in Angus. He was the first of ten children, three boys and seven girls. His father had botanical and entomological interests, and was also a translator of Dante, all of which helped to mould young Charles' future. Kinnordy was soon exchanged as a permanent home for Bartley Lodge with its eighty acres in the New Forest. Summer visits, however, were made from time to time, …
Sir Paul Neile, F. R. S. (1613-1686)
SIR PAUL NEILE is the only one of the twelve founder members of the Royal Society of whom there is no record in the Dictionary of National Biography. We should know little of his activities were it not for the entries in the Journal Books of the Society and the references to him by Evelyn and in Huygens, correspondence. He was the son of Richard Neile, Archbishop of York and the father of William Neile, F.R.S. (1637-1670), a brilliant mathematici…
Epilogue
The pages of this volume bear eloquent testimony to the impetus which the early Fellows gave to experimental science both by their individual work and by the warm spirit of fellowship that bound them together from the days of their earliest meetings. These usually ended in a convivial meal, a tradition that has been perpetuated in the Royal Society Club. Looking back over the three centuries it is pertinent to survey in this Epilogue the contribu…
Anniversary dinner 1958
Mr President, Your Excellencies, Your Worship, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen: IT is your flattering custom to invite a member of H.M. Government to 1 address you at your Anniversary Dinner. It is an honour, I know, which any of my colleagues would eagerly accept, but none more eagerly than myself, for, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I feel a special sense of responsibility, of indebtedness, to the progress of science, and, if I may say so, a mo…
Some unpublished letters of Charles Darwin
Few sources of information are so revealing about the life and character of a man as the letters he wrote, particularly when the range of persons to whom they were addressed is wide enough to include members of his own family, close friends, slight acquaintances, future enemies, rivals, his old attendants, and tradesmen. These are all represented in the small collection of letters from Charles Darwin that are included here. The number of his lett…
Bibliography of recent books and articles dealing with the history of the royal society or its fellows
Each number of Notes and Records contains a short bibliography of books and articles dealing with the history of the Royal Society or its Fellows which have been noted since the publication of the last number. If Fellows would be good enough to draw the Editor’s attention to omissions these would be added in the next issue
Joseph Dalton Hooker, F. R. S. (1817-1911)
Joseph Dalton Hooker was eight years the junior of Charles Darwin (1809-82) and lived twenty-nine years after Darwin’s death. He was, for a long period, the personal friend of Darwin and the frank critic of many of Darwin’s researches and of the botanical aspects of Darwinian theories. Hooker was a botanist and, since he had an extensive first-hand experience of many branches of botany, above all of plant taxonomy and phytogeography, it was natur…
Epilogue
The preceding pages have provided vivid word-portraits of the four personalities who, more than any others, helped to create an intellectual environment for Charles Darwin’s thoughts; Erasmus Darwin and Malthus by their writings, Lyell and Hooker through constant personal association and correspondence. It was the world’s good fortune that Charles’s material circumstances gave him the freedom to follow his natural bent and to profit by the condit…
Erasmus Darwin, F. R. S. (1731-1802)
A short account of Erasmus Darwin is hard to compass. This massive figure cannot be isolated, for however large he loomed in the last half of the 18th century, the greater figure of his grandson Charles has almost obscured this bulky giant. I am not attempting an assessment of his contribution to evolutionary thought, but hope to present aspects of his originality and humanity that entitle him to be remembered in his own right, besides illuminati…
Alfred Russel Wallace, F. R. S., and his essays of 1858 and 1855
IN 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin jointly and independently stated the principle of natural selection, and in 1859 Darwin published the Origin of species. In this essay I want to discuss the part played by Alfred Wallace in that great event: was he no more than a catalyst for Darwin, applied at a critical moment of his career? I shall try to show how much more than that he was and, up to a point, how similarly they pursued their gr…
Thomas Robert Malthus, F. R. S. (1766-1834)
Malthus was born in 1766, the second son of Daniel Malthus, a landed gentleman of moderate fortune. The father, an amiable, talented but eccentric man, was a friend of Rousseau and Hume, who came to visit him a few weeks after Robert’s birth. Robert’s tutor before he went to Cambridge was Gilbert Wakefield, another disciple of Rousseau, and at Jesus College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1784, he was a pupil of William Frend who was a friend of …
The Right Reverend John Wilkins, F. R. S
In the history of the Royal Society there have been certain instances of hereditary genius, but there can be few Fellows in whom the influence of both parental strains is seen so clearly as in John Wilkins. He was the son of Walter Wilkins, an Oxford citizen and goldsmith, of whom Aubrey says: ‘Mr Francis Potter knew him very well, and was wont to say was a very ingeniose man, and had a very Mechanicall head. He was much for Trying of Experiments…
William Croone, F. R. S. (1633-1684)
One day in November 1749, there was delivered to the house of the vicar of Alconbury, near Huntingdon, a recently published sermon, which gave him so much pleasure that he wrote to the author: ‘I was so delighted with it, and indeed so sensibly affected with several observations, that I intend to give it a second reading soon. You have drawn the outlines for future Preachers to fill up.’ The preacher was none other than Thomas Birch, F. R. S., re…
The Tercentenary Conversazione, 23 July 1960
The Conversazione on Saturday 23 July, honoured by the presence of H.R.H. The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was the principal occasion during the Celebrations when the Society was able to entertain its guests within Burlington House. This was made possible by the generous co-operation of the neighbouring Societies in Burlington House, and the willingness of the Presidents and Councils of the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Academy of Arts, …
Henry William Robinson
For frequenters of the library of the Royal Society it is still hard to get accustomed to the absence o f M r H. W . Robinson, who was for so long not only a familiar and friendly figure to all readers, but was a man to whom seekers turned instinctively for information about less familiar records bearing on the history of science, especially those in which the Royal Society was concerned. He was an unrivalled expert on matters contained in the So…
The formal opening of the Tercentenary Celebrations by Her Majesty The Queen, Patron, at the Royal Albert Hall on 19 July 1960
If some of the founding Fellows could have witnessed the opening ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall they would have observed a scene of pageantry and colour which would have vied with the ceremonial of their own days. They would have listened to a story that would have surpassed their wildest hopes. Special floral arrangements by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, provided the framework for the large company to be assembled on the platform of the vas…
New horizons in organic chemistry
Tercentenary Lecture delivered by Sir Alexander Todd, F.R.S., at 2.30 p.m.on Wednesday 20 July at the Royal There have been two definitions of organic chemistry. The original definition, due to Berzelius (ca. 1800), was ‘the chemistry of substances found in living matter.’ The second, commonly ascribed to Gmelin, appeared first about fifty years later, when more was known about the peculiarities of the substances found in living matter—the ‘organ…
Special broadcast programmes
The British Broadcasting Corporation marked the occasion of the Tercentenary by a number of broadcasts in television and sound. The proceedings in the Royal Albert Hall on 19 July were televised, and a recording of the Tercentenary Address was broadcast in the Home Service in the evening. A recording of the Address and a commentary on the Opening Ceremony was broadcast in the General Overseas Service. On the evening of 19 July at 9.15 p.m. His Ro…
Visits
The visit to the University of Oxford took place of Thursday 21 July. The visitors arrived in Oxford by coach where they were met by student guides who took them on short tours of some of the Colleges and University buildings and later to the Colleges where they were entertained to lunch. In the afternoon they went sight-seeing again, some to the Museum of the History of Science to see a special exhibition illustrating the work of the early Fello…
Première of films arranged by the Shell International Petroleum Company
On the afternoon of Friday 22 July, a premiere of films was given at the Royal Festival Hall and was followed by a Reception at Tea when Mr F. J. Stephens acted as host for the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies. The programme was introduced by Sir Cyril Flinshelwood, President of the Royal Society, who said: . ‘In the Charter of the Royal Society the improvement of natural knowledge is coupled with that of the useful arts. Now the tradition fo…
William Croone’s theory of muscular contraction
In the mid-seventeenth century William Croone had been the earliest among his contemporaries to concern himself with muscular motion. Thus, much of the discussion on muscular movement in the period after 1664 is either a commentary upon Croone’s views or is derived from them, and his influence was thus widespread, especially on the Continent. The background to Croone’s own views is largely that of Greek physiology as represented in the works of G…
Charles II, a royal martyr
Charles 1 of England is usually referred to as the ‘Royal Martyr’. He died for his religious and political principles. However, his son Charles II has an equally good claim to the same title since his death was probably due to his devotion to science. Charles II ascended to the throne in 1660. In the same year he granted a charter to the Royal Society of London under whose auspices experimental science became the popular rage. Many a perfumed dan…
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