1703 and Other Anniversaries

1703 and Other AnniversariesAuthor(s): Alan CookSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 1-2Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3557677 .

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 57 (1), 1-2 (2003) doi 10.1098/rsnr.2003.0192

1703 AND OTHER ANNIVERSARIES

Samuel Pepys, Robert Hooke, John Wallis and Vincenzo Viviani, four distinguished and influential Fellows of the Society, died in 1703. In this issue Professor Thrower com- memorates Pepys's life, his activities in the Society, especially as President, and his development of the sound administrative foundation of the Royal Navy that from the time of his death until World War I enabled it to dominate the oceans worldwide. Pepys had been closely associated with James, Duke of York, Admiral and King. As Secretary of the Navy his final service to James was to bring out the fleet when the invasion of William of Orange was imminent, only to see it neutralized by the tactics of its com- mander and bypassed by the Dutch fleet. Naturally William as William III could not trust Pepys, who resigned, never to serve again. Wallis, Hooke and Pepys were early Fellows of the Society, Wallis from 1661, Hooke from 1663 and Pepys from 1664. The deaths of all three marked the end of the formative years of the youthful Society and opened new chapters. The following year and, as it is usually supposed, in consequence of Hooke's death, Newton published the Opticks and accepted the Presidency of the Society. Immediately after Wallis died at the end of 1703, the Electors to the Savilian Professorship of Geometry elected Halley, who was still on his way home from the Adriatic. From then on, as the recently published third volume of Flamsteed's corre- spondence shows, Newton, with Halley and other of his associates, dominated the Society and brought the Royal Observatory under the oversight of Visitors appointed by the Council of the Society.

Vincenzo Viviani (1622-1703) of Florence was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1696. He had been a pupil of Galileo's (he was 18 when Galileo died in 1640) and sub- sequently wrote a life of Galileo and attempted to have him commemorated in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, something that became possible only very much later. He demonstrated that Galileo was born on the day that Michelangelo died (18 February 1564), a most auspicious coincidence for the city of Florence and the Medici dynasty- in fact Galileo was born three days too early. Viviani was a student of Greek geometry and reconstructed the fifth book of the Conics of Apollonius of Perga, and was thus a pre- cursor of Halley as editor of Apollonius. He was a member of the short-lived Accademia del Cimento (1657-67) that was founded by the Medici princes, and of the Academie des Sciences of Paris. In 1688 Halley sent him a copy of Newton's Principia.

This year the Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, the Italian national academy of science and letters, celebrates the 400th anniversary of the foundation of the first Accademia dei Lincei by Prince Federico Cesi in Rome on 17 August 1603. Galileo was elected in 1611 and the academy published works of his, Istoria e Dimostrazione intorno alle Macchie solari (1613) and II Saggiatore (1623). The Library of The Royal Society holds, among the Arundel books, one by the Neapolitan naturalist and Fellow of the Lincei, Fabio Colonna, Fabii Columnae Lyncei Minus Congitarum Plantarum Pars Prima & Secunda Pars (Rome, 1616). The first Lincei faded away after the death of Prince Cesi in 1630 but its example prompted the foundation of the Accademia del Cimento in Florence and the somewhat longer-lived Roman Accademia Fisica-mathematica of Monsignor G.-G. Ciampini under the patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden (1679). More significantly,

1 ? 2003 The Royal Society



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2 Editorial

Galileo and the Lincei were undoubtedly in the minds of some of the early Fellows of The Royal Society, such as Robert Boyle.

Viviani was not a member of the Lincei because he was only 18 when it disbanded, but he is a personal link between Galileo and the early Royal Society and with Newton through Halley's presenting him with a copy of the Principia and through his election to the Society. His life spanned much of the century from the foundation of the Lincei in 1603 to his own death on 22 September 1703.

In the course of the year we shall record two other anniversaries. Peter the Great founded St Petersburg in 1703. There followed a number of connections between The Royal Society and Russian science that we expect to notice in a later issue. The structure of DNA was unravelled in 1953, and the history and consequences of that achievement will be celebrated in a number of ways in this country and elsewhere. We shall carry some historical items in our May issue.

We print as usual the President's Address at the Anniversary Meeting and a notice of the new volume of Biographical Memoirs.

Sir Alan Cook



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1703 and Other Anniversaries