Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0010
John Meurig Thomas
Peter Mark Roget was appointed as a non-resident Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution, at the same time as Michael Faraday was appointed resident Fullerian Professor in 1833. Roget was an accomplished physiologist and also a medical doctor, who played a leading role in the Royal Society as its Secretary. He is thorugh to have compiled his invaluable Thesaurus—the reverse of a dictionary—because of insomnia. And the Thesaurus has seldom been out of print since it first appeared, thanks to revisions of it carried out by his son and grandson. Many eminent scientists have occupied the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology, notably, Sir Peter Medawar and Sir Thomas Huxley (as well as his grandsons, Julian and Andrew Huxley). The contributions of these eminent physiologists are adumbrated in this chapter.
{"title":"Peter Mark Roget","authors":"John Meurig Thomas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Peter Mark Roget was appointed as a non-resident Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution, at the same time as Michael Faraday was appointed resident Fullerian Professor in 1833. Roget was an accomplished physiologist and also a medical doctor, who played a leading role in the Royal Society as its Secretary. He is thorugh to have compiled his invaluable Thesaurus—the reverse of a dictionary—because of insomnia. And the Thesaurus has seldom been out of print since it first appeared, thanks to revisions of it carried out by his son and grandson. Many eminent scientists have occupied the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology, notably, Sir Peter Medawar and Sir Thomas Huxley (as well as his grandsons, Julian and Andrew Huxley). The contributions of these eminent physiologists are adumbrated in this chapter.","PeriodicalId":261119,"journal":{"name":"Albemarle Street","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125346419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0013
John Meurig Thomas
The final chapter constitutes my reflections on the status—present and past—of the Royal Institution and my own involvement in various aspects of its works. One of the main conclusions that I draw is that (a) the presentation of popular lectures is still being maintained at a very high level; (b) the RI Christmas Lectures are now less impressive when televised than they were even 20 years ago, because they now constitute only some 3 lectures (compared with the six that were given 30 years ago); (c) it is noted with sadness that the original research carried out at the DFRL (founded in 1896) has now almost ceased.
{"title":"Afterword","authors":"John Meurig Thomas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"The final chapter constitutes my reflections on the status—present and past—of the Royal Institution and my own involvement in various aspects of its works. One of the main conclusions that I draw is that (a) the presentation of popular lectures is still being maintained at a very high level; (b) the RI Christmas Lectures are now less impressive when televised than they were even 20 years ago, because they now constitute only some 3 lectures (compared with the six that were given 30 years ago); (c) it is noted with sadness that the original research carried out at the DFRL (founded in 1896) has now almost ceased.","PeriodicalId":261119,"journal":{"name":"Albemarle Street","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127834464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0007
John Meurig Thomas
It was at the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory in the late 1920s, early 1930s, that a group of Sir William Bragg’s research students (notably J. D. Bernal and W. T. Astbury) started to study, by X-ray methods, all nature of living molecules, such as skin, amino acids, steroids, finger nails, proteins, tendons and viruses. These studies continued when Bernal returned to Cambridge and Astbury started a molecular biophysics group in the University of Leeds. Dorothy Hodgkin (from Oxford) and Max Perutz (from Vienna) both joined Bernal at Cambridge, and they made enormous progress in determining the structures of ‘living’ molecules. Hodgkin elucidated the structure of cholesterol and many other steroids. And Perutz started his monumental work on haemoglobin at Cambridge, and he also studied it at the DFRL.
{"title":"Molecular Biology and the Crucial Role Played by the Davy–Faraday Research Laboratory in its Birth","authors":"John Meurig Thomas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"It was at the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory in the late 1920s, early 1930s, that a group of Sir William Bragg’s research students (notably J. D. Bernal and W. T. Astbury) started to study, by X-ray methods, all nature of living molecules, such as skin, amino acids, steroids, finger nails, proteins, tendons and viruses. These studies continued when Bernal returned to Cambridge and Astbury started a molecular biophysics group in the University of Leeds. Dorothy Hodgkin (from Oxford) and Max Perutz (from Vienna) both joined Bernal at Cambridge, and they made enormous progress in determining the structures of ‘living’ molecules. Hodgkin elucidated the structure of cholesterol and many other steroids. And Perutz started his monumental work on haemoglobin at Cambridge, and he also studied it at the DFRL.","PeriodicalId":261119,"journal":{"name":"Albemarle Street","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121776540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0009
John Meurig Thomas
Ever since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, there has been enormous interest in the civilization of the ancient Egyptians, that has lasted more than six millennia. There were many early Discourses in the RI on the nature and unwrapping of Egyptian mummies. There were also speculations about the construction and dimensions of the famous Giza pyramids, especially that known as Khufu. Some of the speculations turned out to be bizarre. The highlight of this chapter, however, is a summary of the account that Howard Carter gave at the RI in 1925 when he described his discovery, and the contents of the Tomb of Tut-ank-Amun. He showed some spectacular objects that were discovered in the Tomb. Also discussed in this chapter is the role of colour (of minerals especially) in the lives of the ancient Egyptians. Humphry Davy was able to re-discover the recipe for making the coloured synthetic mineral, Egyptian Blue, which is used a the crown of Queen Nefertiti.
{"title":"Egyptomania at the RI","authors":"John Meurig Thomas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Ever since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, there has been enormous interest in the civilization of the ancient Egyptians, that has lasted more than six millennia. There were many early Discourses in the RI on the nature and unwrapping of Egyptian mummies. There were also speculations about the construction and dimensions of the famous Giza pyramids, especially that known as Khufu. Some of the speculations turned out to be bizarre. The highlight of this chapter, however, is a summary of the account that Howard Carter gave at the RI in 1925 when he described his discovery, and the contents of the Tomb of Tut-ank-Amun. He showed some spectacular objects that were discovered in the Tomb. Also discussed in this chapter is the role of colour (of minerals especially) in the lives of the ancient Egyptians. Humphry Davy was able to re-discover the recipe for making the coloured synthetic mineral, Egyptian Blue, which is used a the crown of Queen Nefertiti.","PeriodicalId":261119,"journal":{"name":"Albemarle Street","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130856723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0005
John Meurig Thomas
Lord Rayleigh, who worked at the RI for 15 years as well as in his baronial home in Terling, Essex, is regarded by most scientists as one of the cleverest and perspicacious of all classical physicist. He was extraordinarily gifted both as an experimentalist and as a theoretician. It was he who first explained why the sky is blue, and why sunsets are red. He also discovered the noble gas, argon, which earned him the first-ever Nobel Prize (as a British scientist). As a young man, suffering from tuberculosis, he sailed with his wife up the Nile, during the course of which he wrote the definitive text (Vol 1) of the ‘Theory of Sound’: he solved his problems as they arose. He had no access to a library. The location of earthquakes and earth tremors are nowadays greatly assisted by his theoretical studies
{"title":"The Incredible Lord Rayleigh","authors":"John Meurig Thomas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Lord Rayleigh, who worked at the RI for 15 years as well as in his baronial home in Terling, Essex, is regarded by most scientists as one of the cleverest and perspicacious of all classical physicist. He was extraordinarily gifted both as an experimentalist and as a theoretician. It was he who first explained why the sky is blue, and why sunsets are red. He also discovered the noble gas, argon, which earned him the first-ever Nobel Prize (as a British scientist). As a young man, suffering from tuberculosis, he sailed with his wife up the Nile, during the course of which he wrote the definitive text (Vol 1) of the ‘Theory of Sound’: he solved his problems as they arose. He had no access to a library. The location of earthquakes and earth tremors are nowadays greatly assisted by his theoretical studies","PeriodicalId":261119,"journal":{"name":"Albemarle Street","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132199784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0006
John Meurig Thomas
In an age when climate change is of vital importance, it is necessary to seek ways of ‘decarbonizing’ energy. In the 1840s a lawyer friend of Michael Faraday, named William Grove, invented a new method of creating electricity without producing carbon dioxide. He gave a Discourse on the subject in 1843. This he did using what later became known as the fuel cell. Effectively, under the right conditions, a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen on coming into contact with a catalyst like platinum, generates electricity directly. This is now the basis of the hydrogen economy, which is being increasingly studied the world over. Another Discourse on the hydrogen fuel cell was presented at the RI in 1960 by Francis Bacon, who was responsible for designing the fuel cell used by the astronauts who landed on the moon.
{"title":"The Fuel Cell","authors":"John Meurig Thomas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"In an age when climate change is of vital importance, it is necessary to seek ways of ‘decarbonizing’ energy. In the 1840s a lawyer friend of Michael Faraday, named William Grove, invented a new method of creating electricity without producing carbon dioxide. He gave a Discourse on the subject in 1843. This he did using what later became known as the fuel cell. Effectively, under the right conditions, a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen on coming into contact with a catalyst like platinum, generates electricity directly. This is now the basis of the hydrogen economy, which is being increasingly studied the world over. Another Discourse on the hydrogen fuel cell was presented at the RI in 1960 by Francis Bacon, who was responsible for designing the fuel cell used by the astronauts who landed on the moon.","PeriodicalId":261119,"journal":{"name":"Albemarle Street","volume":"159 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114172151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0011
John Meurig Thomas
There is often much debate in scientific circles as to which experiments or lecture-demonstrations are the most instructive, or spectacular. This chapter deals with several candidates, several of them having been carried out at the RI. One of these is the so-called two-slit experiment performed by Thomas Young in 1801. Others include the experiments and insights of Sir Lawrence Bragg, in connection with his interpretation of X-ray diffraction; Humphry Davy’s lecture-demonstration of the reality of the decrease of resistance of a metallic wire when its temperature is decreased. There is also a candidate from pre-Christian times, namely the determination of the circumference of the Earth done by Eratosthenes in Alexandria in the second century BC.
{"title":"The Most Beautiful Experiment in Physics","authors":"John Meurig Thomas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"There is often much debate in scientific circles as to which experiments or lecture-demonstrations are the most instructive, or spectacular. This chapter deals with several candidates, several of them having been carried out at the RI. One of these is the so-called two-slit experiment performed by Thomas Young in 1801. Others include the experiments and insights of Sir Lawrence Bragg, in connection with his interpretation of X-ray diffraction; Humphry Davy’s lecture-demonstration of the reality of the decrease of resistance of a metallic wire when its temperature is decreased. There is also a candidate from pre-Christian times, namely the determination of the circumference of the Earth done by Eratosthenes in Alexandria in the second century BC.","PeriodicalId":261119,"journal":{"name":"Albemarle Street","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115138838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0002
John Meurig Thomas
The American-born Sir Benjamin Thompson, otherwise known as Count Rumford of the Holy Roman Empire, was at one time the ‘Supremo’ of Munich in Bavaria, where he was both a successful social reformer, an incisive scientist and the creator of the English Garden in that city. Disappointed when he came to London in 1798, when King George IV refused to accept him as the Bavarian Ambassador to the Court of St. James, he decided to found the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He appointed two brilliant Englishmen—Humphry Davy and Thomas Young (of Milverton, Somerset), now regarded as the last person ‘who knew everything’. As well as his extraordinary linguistic skills—he helped decipher the Rosetta Stone—he was a physician, a physiologist, a philologist and a physicist. One of his experiments at the RI in 1801 disproved Newton’s views on the nature of light. Rumford’s final years in Paris entailed an unhappy marriage with the widow of Lavoisier.
{"title":"Count Rumford and his Remarkable Creation in Albemarle Street","authors":"John Meurig Thomas","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"The American-born Sir Benjamin Thompson, otherwise known as Count Rumford of the Holy Roman Empire, was at one time the ‘Supremo’ of Munich in Bavaria, where he was both a successful social reformer, an incisive scientist and the creator of the English Garden in that city. Disappointed when he came to London in 1798, when King George IV refused to accept him as the Bavarian Ambassador to the Court of St. James, he decided to found the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He appointed two brilliant Englishmen—Humphry Davy and Thomas Young (of Milverton, Somerset), now regarded as the last person ‘who knew everything’. As well as his extraordinary linguistic skills—he helped decipher the Rosetta Stone—he was a physician, a physiologist, a philologist and a physicist. One of his experiments at the RI in 1801 disproved Newton’s views on the nature of light. Rumford’s final years in Paris entailed an unhappy marriage with the widow of Lavoisier.","PeriodicalId":261119,"journal":{"name":"Albemarle Street","volume":"375 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115969078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898005.003.0008
John Meurig Thomas
In 1986, one of the world’s leading experts on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Professor Raymond Andrew of the University of Florida, gave the first public exhibition in Britain of the benign technique of investigating the human body in a Discourse at the RI. He gave the background to the technique, which derives from magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which is described in this chapter. The pinnacle of his talk, summarised in this chapter, was the image of his own head that he had recorded in Florida, a few weeks earlier. Other techniques are now being used to explore the condition of human bodies, including their illnesses, are also described here, including the powerful technique of positron emission tomography. A non-mathematical account of the principle involved in these powerful new medical technologies is given in this chapter.
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