In This IssueAuthor(s): Alan CookSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Jul., 1998), p. 203Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/531856 .

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 52 (2), 203 (1998)

IN THIS ISSUE

In September 1798, William Thompson, Count Rumford, came to England for the second time, having left the service of the Elector of Bavaria. Already well-known for many important discoveries in physics and technology, he would now found the Royal Institution in London. Earlier this year, Sir John Meurig Thomas, formerly Director of the Royal Institution, addressed a meeting of the American Philosophical Society on Rumford's colourful life and the early years of the Royal Institution. Unfortunately, our publication dates do not coincide with the exact anniversary of Rumford's return to London, but we expect to include Sir John's address in our next issue.

Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, members of the 'Geneva Common Room' and Sir William Hamilton were distinguished Fellows of the Society, well-known to each other and with common interests. They all flourished at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, and are subjects of papers in this issue. Professor Rowlinson's paper on early studies of the Alps and of volcanoes reminds us that Hamilton was not only a great collector of vases, but that he also took a serious interest in volcanoes. The early students of mountains and volcanoes were, we should say, dilettante. They might seem less serious than Rumford, with his investigations of potatoes, cooking stoves and the heat produced in boring cannon. They may also seem less serious than Rumford's contemporaries in France, who were engaged on improving technology for the French state-du Pont, Carot, and especially Lavoisier, who was nonetheless guillotined in the Terror, and whose wife Rumford later married briefly. Whether driven by war or venturesome travel, those years at the turn of the century were very fruitful in the natural sciences, with some most diverse people driven by demanding curiosity about the natural world, and by a desire to know and to understand.

Robert Hooke, Curator of the Royal Society for many of its early years, was someone insatiably curious and inventive. The final instalment of the story of his surveys and visitations in London in the years after the Great Fire is in this issue. Those years were very important in his life. He found time to do much else, yet his duties in the City made him a very great deal of money. They brought him close to the King, and in them he began his long collaboration with Wren as architect. That is a side of Hooke's life of which we know too little: he worked with Wren on the Monument and he was the sole architect of the Bethlehem Hospital on London Wall. He probably collaborated with Wren on a number of City churches, but few details are known.

Sir Alan Cook, F.R.S.

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© 1998 The Royal Society

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