Two AnniversariesAuthor(s): Alan CookSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 57, No. 2 (May, 2003), p. 133Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3557690 .

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 57 (2), 133 doi 10.1098/rsnr.2003.0200

TWO ANNIVERSARIES

Two events 350 years apart, whose anniversaries fall this year, are notable in the history of science. Others are celebrating them more extensively than we can, but we still mark in this issue the founding of the Accademia dei Lincei on 17 August 1603 and the unrav- elling of DNA at the end of February 1953.

Our frontispiece reproduces the first page of signatures of Lincei, beginning with Prince Federico Cesi, the founder, and including such well-known names as Johann Heck (of Holland), Giambattista della Porta and of course Galileo Galilei. The studies and con- troversies of Galileo are for many the beginning of modem anti-Aristotelian natural phi- losophy, but there are other seminal works from the Lincei. Prince Cesi himself compiled a vast encyclopaedic account of Mexican natural history, in a form that Bacon would surely have approved of, and to which John Ray referred in his Historia Plantarum. Giambattista della Porta investigated chemistry, optics and meteorology. So we pay hom- age to our distinguished predecessor in this its auspicious year, recalling that the exam- ple of the Accademia was one of the stimuli for the founding of our Society, even though the first Lincei faded away 30 years before ours came into being. In more recent years, some of our Fellowship have been elected Foreign Fellows of the Lincei, and there are Lincei among our Foreign Membership.

We have not ventured to compete with the large and important conferences on DNA that are taking place in this country and America. Instead we carry an article on genetics after DNA. We also record the work of Rosalind Franklin, whose untimely death pre- vented her from receiving the recognition at home and abroad that the whole of her work, not DNA alone, would surely have justified. We have a review of the recent biography of her and an announcement of the first Rosalind Franklin Award, along with our congratu- lations to the recipient, Professor Susan Gibson.

Interest in Newton never wanes, and is likely to be fired up again by the new English translation of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a review of which appears in this same issue with an analysis of the puzzle of the tides of Tonkin. A trans- lation should not only produce a readable version of the original but should also if pos- sible help readers to appreciate its deeper significance. Our reviewer considers that aspect by comparison with the French translation of Mme Du Chatelet, who is surely a notable example of translator as expositor.

Sir Alan Cook

The Frontispiece shows page 2 of the Original Roll of the Lincei with the signatures of the first Academicians. Reproduced by permission of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei from MS. Linceo 4, Library of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and Corsiniana, Palazzo Corsini, Rome. The signatories are Frederico Cesi, founder, 1603, Jan Heck, 1603, Francesco Stelluti, 1603, Anastasio de Filiis, 1603, J. Baptista della Porta, 1610, Galileo Galilei, 1611, John Terrentius (Schreck), 1611, Johann Faber, 1611, Theophilus Molitor, 1611.

133 ? 2003 The Royal Society

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