President of the Royal Society

Abstract

T HE ROYAL SOCIETY, to which Newton had dedicated his Prindpia in 1687 only to ignore it steadfastly when he moved to London, stood at a low ebb during the early years of his residence in the capital city. Membership, which had reached more than two hundred in the early years of the 1670s, now scarcely numbered more than half that figure, and meetings, given over mostly to miscellaneous chitchat devoid of serious scientific interest, suggested little of the interests that had brought the society together forty years earlier. The presence of Robert Hooke, not Newton's favorite natural philosopher, may well have determined his absence from the weekly meetings. Hooke was usually there. When Newton put in one of his rare appearances to show a “new instrument contrived by him,” a sextant, which would be useful in navigation, Hooke reminded him of past antipathies by claiming that he had invented it more than thirty years before. Hooke's death in March 1703 removed an obstacle and prepared the way for Newton's election as president at the next annual meeting on St. Andrew's Day, 30 November. Obscurity covers the background to Newton's election. Spontaneous expressions of popular will did not govern the selection of officers of the Royal Society. In all probability, Dr. Hans Sloane, the secretary, made the prior arrangements. At the meeting on 30 November something nearly went awry. Newton was not a political leader who had only to be proposed to be elected. Only twenty-two of the thirty members present voted to place him on the council, a necessary preliminary to election as president. Once elected to the council, he still received only twenty-four votes for president. Clearly, a group within the Royal Society did not rush to welcome England's preeminent natural philosopher to the presidential chair. Truth to tell, they did not rush to reelect him the next year, and the absence of vote totals in the society's Journal Book the following two years strongly implies a continuing want of universal enthusiasm. Less than two years after Newton's election, Queen Anne knighted him in Cambridge. Master of the Mint and president of the Royal Society, Sir Isaac Newton had become a personage of consequence. The attention he devoted to his coat of arms testifies that he recognized as much.