Latest Fellows of the Royal Society Stories
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The 2011 Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Fisher Lectureship Committee has named Census Bureau executive Roderick J. Little to deliver the Fisher Lecture at the Joint Statistics Meetings (JSM) in San Diego this summer. The Fisher Lectureship and Award, awarded annually, was established in 1963 by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies to honor the outstanding contribution of a contemporary...
A special conference held to honor Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday went on without the guest of honor Sunday, as the professor and physicist was forced to cancel his appearance after being hospitalized for an unidentified infection last week. According to the Associated Press (AP), University of Cambridge Vice Chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz told those in attendance, "Unfortunately, his recovery has not been fast enough for him to be able to be here… If you're listening Stephen, happy...
One of the 21st century’s most brilliant public figures Stephen Hawking has recently placed an advertisement on his website for a personal assistant at a starting salary of around $40,000. The 69-year old professor at Cambridge University says he is not looking for a fellow physicist, just someone with technical savvy to help him with diverse tasks. Professor Hawking, whose work in theoretical physics, cosmology, and quantum gravity have established him as one of the century’s most...
Medical records contained in a Seventeenth century book are set to go on display in a new exhibition celebrating 350 years of book collecting at the Royal Society. The medical records from John Graunt’s 1679 book, Natural and Political Observations … Upon the Bills of Mortality, contain such information as people dying from lethargy, itch and fright. The book also reveals that more than 30,000 people in London died of consumption between 1647 and 1657. The bills of mortality were...
$100,000 prize honors female scientists who have made extraordinary contributions to biomedical science NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Brenda Milner, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of cognitive neuroscience whose discoveries revolutionized the understanding of memory, was awarded the 2011 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize from The Rockefeller University yesterday. The prize, which honors female scientists who have made extraordinary contributions to biomedical science and...
LA JOLLA, Calif., May 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Royal Society announced today that Salk Institute molecular biologist Joanne Chory, Ph.D., an expert on how plants regulate their growth, has been named a foreign member of the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. She is being recognized as "a beacon of scientific excellence and relentless ambassador for plant research in the international community." "Joanne is a leader in the field of...
Doctors are putting modern medicine to the test to unravel the mystery of the long, painful illness and death of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution.Darwin's ailments were the subject of this year's annual Historical Clinicopathological Conference (CPC) in Baltimore on Friday. The conference, sponsored by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs (VA) Maryland Health Care System, is devoted to the modern medical diagnosis of disorders that affected...
Doctors Investigate Long Illness and Death of Scientist Known as 'Father of Evolution' BALTIMORE, May 6, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Now, 200 years after the birth of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, doctors are putting modern medicine to the test to unravel the mystery of the painful illness that plagued the scientist for much of his life. Darwin is the subject of this year's annual Historical Clinicopathological Conference (CPC) sponsored by the University of Maryland School...
A British astrophysicist and cosmologist known for his studies into the origins of the universe and its future was awarded one of the world's top religious awards this week for his work in exploring life's spiritual dimension. Martin Rees, 68, who is an expert on the extreme physics of black holes and the Big Bang, is the recipient of the $1.6 million 2011 Templeton Prize, announced by the John Templeton Foundation on Wednesday. Rees was chosen for the award because of the nature of his...
The prestigious Alan Mathison Turing Award was awarded to a Harvard University professor whose machine learning research helped to create an IBM computer that defeated two human competitors on a recent "Jeopardy!" tournament. Leslie Valiant, a computer science and applied mathematics professor, was honored for his "contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science," the Association for Computing Machinery said on Wednesday. The...
Latest Fellows of the Royal Society Reference Libraries
The Zoological Journal was a scientific journal published in the early nineteenth century on a quarterly basis. It was devoted entirely to zoology (animal kingdom). It was published in London by W. Philips. It featured “Original Communications, Translations of new and interesting Papers from Foreign sources and notices of new and remarkable facts in any way connected with Zoology," according to Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1823. The journal’s editors were Thomas Bell, John George Children,...
Iguanodon, meaning “Iguana tooth,” is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur known from the Kimmeridgian age of the Late Jurassic Period to the Cenomanian age of the Late Cretaceous Period. It lived in Asia, Europe and North America. Research in the early 2000s suggests however that only one species, I. bernissartensis, is well-substantiated, and lived during the Early Cretaceous Period in Europe. It was first discovered in 1822 and described three years later by English geologist Gideon...
Antonio de Ulloa was born on January 12, 1716 in Seville. Ulloa enlisted with the Spanish Navy in 1733. In 1735, he was sent to Ecuador as a member of the French Geodesic Mission. The mission, led by Pierre Bouguer, was organized by the French Academy of Sciences to measure a degree of the meridian at the equator. He stayed in Ecuador for 9 years until 1744, during this stint; he discovered platinum with his partner, Jorge Juan. In 1745, he returned to Spain. However, while enroute to...
Alfred Lothar Wegener (November 1, 1880 "“ November 2, 1930) was a German scientist, geologist, and meteorologist. He is best known for establishing the theory of the continental drift. His 1915 theory of continental drift surmised that the continents were slowly floating around the Earth. Most of his basis was strictly circumstantial evidence, and further he was not able to exhibit a mechanism for continental drift, which resulted in an unaccepted hypothesis until the 1950s. At that...
Michel Adanson (April 7, 1727 - August 3, 1806) was a French naturalist of Scottish descent. He was born at Aix-en-Provence. His family moved to Paris in 1730. After leaving the College Sainte Barbe he was employed in the cabinets of R. A. F. Reaumur and Bernard de Jussieu, as well as in the Jardin des Plantes. Adanson left France at the end of 1748 on an exploring expedition to Senegal. He remained there for five years, collecting and describing numerous animal and plant species. He also...
