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You have accessMoreSectionsView PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Cite this article Fox Robert 2010EditorialNotes Rec. R. Soc.64315–317http://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2010.0082SectionYou have accessEditorialEditorial Robert Fox Robert Fox [email protected] Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author Robert Fox Robert Fox [email protected] Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author Published:06 October 2010https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2010.0082Other version(s) of this articleYou are viewing the most recent version of this article. Previous versions: January 1, 2010: Previous Version 1 Notes and Records of the Royal Society is by no means the only historical journal to be making a special effort to encourage the work of younger scholars. Last year, as part of its commitment to this ideal, it announced a new essay award for authors who had taken their postgraduate degree within the preceding five years. It is a pleasure now to publish the first award-winning essay, by Daniel Mitchell. The essay treats the development by the French physicist Gabriel Lippmann of an interferometric method of colour photography, the work for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1908. As Mitchell shows, other considerations entered into the decision to award Lippmann the prize, including the renewed confirmation that the interferometric method provided for the wave theory of light. Also relevant was Lippmann's long-standing reputation as a physicist with a particular skill in experiments of extreme precision, which, for some years, had already marked him as a potential recipient of the prize.The fashioning of reputations is a theme in other articles in this issue as well. Bernard Lightman's study of 10 book-length biographies of Charles Darwin that appeared in Britain and the USA between Darwin's death in 1882 and 1900 shows how a process of constructing an iconic Darwinian image (already begun in the 1860s) continued through the last two decades of the nineteenth century. This was before the rediscovery of Mendel's work gave powerful confirmation to the theory of evolution by natural selection and before the centenary celebrations of 1909 gave us the somewhat different image that survived until quite recently. Many visions of Darwin were in play in the period that Lightman discusses: some accounts stressed Darwin's noble character, others emphasized the range of his scientific achievements and his supreme qualities as an observer, and others again gave prominence to his religious views (his son Francis sought to portray these as unorthodox but respectable, to the point that they might even be seen as an updated form of that very teleological view of life that Darwinism was commonly thought to have discredited). Although the tone was predominantly hagiographical, it was by no means universally so. There was certainly no consensus on where the true Darwin lay.Mark Grossman's article deals with another example of a canon of received historical narrative. The case he treats is the origin of the chemical atomic theory. His examination of the way in which William Higgins came to be relegated to the sidelines of the atomic theory narrative brings out the complexity of the processes through which ‘standard’ histories of a scientific innovation come to be achieved. Grossman's aim is not to cast doubt on John Dalton's primacy as the author of the theory but rather to explore the way in which Higgins handled such claims as he might have to a place in the story. Higgins's failure to assert these claims for 25 years, between 1789 and 1814, evidently had much to do with his employment at the Royal Dublin Society. Grossman shows how criticism of Higgins's negligent oversight of the society's mineralogical collection led to the painful redefinition of his chair as one of chemistry alone (rather than of chemistry and mineralogy) in 1812 and, in all probability, to his decision to return to the fray on the question of his priority with regard to atomic theory two years later.In very different contexts and from different perspectives, the articles by Lightman and Grossman show how intimately and enduringly reputation-building is bound up with the processes of science. Maria Björkman and Sven Widmalm reinforce that point in intriguing detail with reference to the eugenics movement in early-twentieth-century Sweden. In pursuit of their goal of promoting eugenics, Swedish scientists, mainly in biology and medicine, used their scientific authority, professional networks, and skills in political lobbying first to secure the founding of a governmental Institute for Race Biology in Uppsala in 1922 and then, under the institute's director Herman Lundborg, to argue for a programme of enforced sterilization. It was only when Lundborg retired in 1935 that the movement lost its momentum. With a left-wing geneticist replacing him at the head of the institute and the Third Reich making its sinister mark in Germany, Lundborg's ideal of a right-wing ‘natural aristocracy’ of political and scientific elites collapsed, and the fruits of eugenic research could be directed to social reform in a truly democratic spirit.At the risk of reiterating the obvious, it is important to state that science has always had its public face. And this public face has mattered (for the conduct of science as well as its diffusion) to a degree that historians in recent years have increasingly come to recognize. Robert Anderson's essay review of a recent book on the Science Museum and the article by Joe Cain on Julian Huxley's seven years as secretary of the Zoological Society of London make the point with special reference to London. No institution in Britain has had a broader remit than the Science Museum in the presentation of science to the general public. But that presentation, as both the book and Anderson make clear, has never been a straightforward matter, with inevitable consequences for frequently changing policies and shifts in the balance between the museum's role as the guardian of a national collection of scientific artefacts and its attempts to interpret science for the non-scientist. A key event in Cain's article is Julian Huxley's dismissal from his position at the Zoological Society in 1942. Huxley had taken the post in 1935 largely in an attempt to provide stability and some material comfort in a life spent hitherto in precarious work as a popular writer and media personality. Once in the post, however, he was ideally placed to promote his intellectual vision of a ‘general biology’ that would systematically seek to place individual facts in a broader context. For Huxley, general principles and processes were always to have priority over individual animals or species, and even the London Zoo was to be nudged towards a greater preoccupation with methodologically sophisticated studies of animal behaviour. In part, Huxley was reflecting trends already well rooted in inter-war Anglo-American life science, but the members of the Zoological Society who voted for his dismissal saw him as a disturbing influence in an institution dominated by specialists with a narrower and more fragmented perception of their role than the overarching one that Huxley was asking them to embrace.Finally, a group of three contributions focus, in very dissimilar ways, on the Royal Society. Malcolm Bishop examines the role of Sir John Tomes in the creation of a true profession of dentistry in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bishop offers a novel analysis of the broader context of Tomes's campaign to reform the poorly regulated world of dental practice, stressing Tomes's own achievements in science (which earned him election to the Royal Society in 1850) and the backing of the 70 Fellows whose sympathy for the cause of medical reform in varying degrees lent strength to his campaign. Although supporters (as well as sceptics) within the Royal College of Surgeons have a prominent place in the account, Bishop argues for the special importance of Tomes's relations within the Royal Society in achieving the crucial breakthroughs of the establishment of the new qualification of LDS in 1859 and the formalization of an effective process of registration in 1875.Turning to the Royal Society as a resource for historians, Ana Maria Alfonso-Goldfarb, Márcia Helena Mendes Ferraz and Piyo Rattansi report on the discovery of three previously disregarded manuscript documents in the Society's archives that throw light on early discussions in the Royal Society about the liquor alkahest or universal solvent. These few pages allow the authors to reconstruct discussions, hitherto only sketchily understood, involving two leading pioneers of the Society, Henry Oldenberg and Jonathan Goddard. With regard to a quite different type of resource, relating to the twentieth century, Jane Wess draws attention to the Society's fine collection of original radiometers by William Crookes, a number of which are displayed in the newly refurbished library in Carlton House Terrace. At one level, the radiometers commend themselves as beautiful objects and examples of Crookes's skills at the laboratory bench (a reminder that much science calls for manual as well as cerebral dexterity). But they also help to throw light on the course of the experimental research and thinking on which Crookes reported in a succession of papers in Philosophical Transactions.Such examples point enticingly to the rich holdings that wait to be exploited in the Royal Society's collections of manuscripts and books, and (perhaps surprisingly to some readers) of objects that embody the material culture of science. After its recent closure, it is a pleasure to report that the library, which cares for these resources, is operating normally once again—and looking better than ever. Previous ArticleNext Article VIEW FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD PDF FiguresRelatedReferencesDetails This Issue20 December 2010Volume 64Issue 4 Article InformationDOI:https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2010.0082Published by:Royal SocietyPrint ISSN:0035-9149Online ISSN:1743-0178History: Published online06/10/2010Published in print20/12/2010 License:© 2010 The Royal Society Citations and impact