Concept

Royal Society

Overview

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, commonly referred to as the Royal Society, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, education and public engagement and fostering international and global co-operation. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II and is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world.

The society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the society's president, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the president are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows. As of 2020, there are about 1,700 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), with up to 73 new fellows appointed each year from a pool of around 800 candidates. There are also royal fellows, honorary fellows and foreign members. Up to 24 new foreign members are appointed each year (from the same pool of 800) and they are allowed to use the postnominal title ForMemRS (Foreign Member of the Royal Society). The Royal Society president is Paul Nurse, who took over from Sir Adrian Smith in December 2025.

Since 1967, the society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London which was previously used by the Embassy of Germany, London.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Royal Society is discussed.

Two things, and those the most essential to man, are wanting in the Royal Society of London, I mean rewards and laws. A seat in the Academy at Paris is a small but secure fortune to a geometrician or a chemist; but this is so far from being the case at London, that the several members of the Royal Society are at a continual, though indeed small expense. Any man in England who declares himself a lover of the…
Voltaire, Letters on England
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
The first of those remedies is the study of science and philosophy, which the state might render almost universal among all people of middling or more than middling rank and fortune; not by giving salaries to teachers in order to make them negligent and idle, but by instituting some sort of probation, even in the higher and more difficult sciences, to be undergone by every person before he was permitted to exercise…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
author linked in the graph
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Lord Morton then names sundry further correspondences. Dr. Wollaston, at that time President of the Royal Society, who had seen the animals, testified to the correctness of his description, and, as shown by his remarks, entertained no doubt about the alleged facts. But good reason for doubt may be assigned. There naturally arises the question--How does it happen that parallel results are not observed in other cases?
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, Volume 1
author linked in the graph; names the idea
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
XLI. _A Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of_ Macclesfield, _President, the_ Council, _and_ Fellows, _of the_ Royal Society, _concerning the Variation of the Magnetic Needle; with a Sett of Tables annexed, which exhibit the Result of upwards of Fifty Thousand Observations, in Six periodic Reviews, from the year 1700 to the year 1756, both inclusive; and are adapted to every Five Degrees of Latitude and…
Various, Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.
opens on it; names the idea
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
The improvements which, in modern times have been made in several different branches of philosophy, have not, the greater part of them, been made in universities, though some, no doubt, have. The greater part of universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
author linked in the graph
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Royal Society

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Cotton Mather

Place in the tradition

Part of Academic publishing.

Explore Royal Society in the interactive graph →