Latest Fellows of the Royal Society Stories
When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species 150 years ago, he deliberately avoided the subject of the origin of life. This, coupled with the mention of the 'Creator' in the last paragraph of the book, led us to believe he was not willing to commit on the matter. An international team, led by Juli Peretó of the Cavanilles Institute in Valencia, now refutes that idea and shows that the British naturalist did explain in other documents how our first ancestors could have come into...
BELLFLOWER, Calif., Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Best-selling author Ray Comfort and actor Kirk Cameron, TV co-hosts of Way of the Master, will give away 100,000 free copies of Charles Darwin's seminal book Origin of Species--considered an atheist's holy bible that contains the blueprint for evolutionary theory. If you are thinking "come again?" you should know the popular TV ministers' 304-page version shares the gospel in an updated introduction, designed to clear up the pervasive mistake...
Several prestigious research awards were handed out to five scientists for developing a life-saving leukemia treatment and for advances in "reprogramming" DNA, which led to a new kind of stem cell, The Associated Press reported.The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation will present the $250,000 Lasker Awards on Oct. 2 in New York. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg will also be receiving a Lasker prize for public service.This year, three scientists will share the clinical medical research...
On Tuesday, London's Natural History Museum unveiled an eight-story extension to house the collections of Charles Darwin. The cocoon shaped addition to the imposing Victorian museum includes the Darwin Centre, which is a state-of-the-art research and exhibition facility named after the father of the theory of evolution. The new ultra-modern white building cost $129 million and houses 17 million insect specimens, three million plant specimens and contains a Climate Change Wall of screens that...
A survey of British children found one in 20 respondents said former Boom Town Rats singer Bob Geldof discovered gravity rather than Sir Isaac Newton.The survey of 5,000 British children between the ages of 6 and 15, conducted by Premier Inn, found 12 percent of those polled identified the Somme as a famous painting rather than the site of a bloody World War I battle, The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.There seems to be a lot of confusion when it comes to children and historical events,...
Adam Jones, an evolutional biologist who has studied Darwin's work for years, says that Darwin's beliefs about the choice of mates and sexual selection being beyond mere chance have been proven correctCharles Darwin wrote about it 150 years ago: animals don't pick their mates by pure chance "“ it's a process that is deliberate and involves numerous factors. After decades of examining his work, experts agree that he pretty much scored a scientific bullseye, but a very big question is,...
In 1919, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) launched an expedition to the West African island of PrÃncipe, to observe a total solar eclipse and prove or disprove Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Now, in a new RAS-funded expedition for the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009), scientists are back.Astronomers Professor Pedro Ferreira from the University of Oxford and Dr Richard Massey from the University of Edinburgh, along with Oxford anthropologist Dr Gisa Weszkalnys, are...
A trove of Benjamin Franklin letters has turned up in the British Library. Discovered by University of California, San Diego professor Alan Houston, the letters are copies of correspondence that hasn't been seen in more than 250 years.All dating from the spring and summer of 1755, the 47 letters by, to and about Franklin are in the hand of one Thomas Birch, a contemporary of Franklin's who was a prodigious "“ almost inveterate "“ compiler and transcriber of historical documents.They are...
Sir Philip Cohen to be inducted into National Academy of Sciences for groundbreaking work in biochemistry and biology WASHINGTON, April 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Sir Philip Cohen of Scotland's University of Dundee will be inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) during its 146th annual meeting on Saturday, April 25 at 8:00 p.m. at the NAS building for his excellence in original scientific research. Sir Philip is one of only four Scottish scientists ever inducted into the NAS,...
Cambridge University said Tuesday that physicist Stephen Hawking's family expects him to recover fully from a chest infection that has left him hospitalized.Hawking was taken to a local hospital in Cambridge on Monday. He is 67 years old and suffers from an illness that has him wheel-chair bound and almost completely paralyzed. Hawking communicates through an electronic voice synthesizer activated by his fingers. He is now "being kept in observation" at the hospital after...
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...
