Royal Society to open up 350 years of scientific history
Leading scientists plan to open up a priceless collection - ranging from a telescope built by Isaac Newton to a letter in defence of spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - that has grown into a record of the making of the modern world. The archives could become part of a £10m permanent exhibition at the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace in London's clubland. The aim is to complete the project by 2010, the Royal Society's 350th anniversary…
The society became the "club" of Britain's best brains: in 350 years, there have been just 8,000 members, ranging from Newton, Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday to the DNA pioneers Francis Crick and James Watson, Stephen Hawking the Cambridge cosmologist and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web. It pioneered scientific publishing. Its Philosophical Transactions is the world's oldest continuous scientific publication. Its 17th century members - Wren, Newton, Edmund Halley of Halley's comet, Robert Boyle of Boyle's law of gases, Samuel Pepys the diarist and maker of the Royal Navy - became part of history and their papers became the basis for that history.