Professor Douglas McKie, F. R. S. E

Abstract

Notes and Records has good reason to mourn the death of Douglas McKie as for many years successive editors so often called on him for help and advice and his rich store of knowledge and his critical judgment were always most generously placed at their disposal. He contributed to our Tercentenary Volume, Origins and Founders , his article, ‘The Origins and Foundation of the Royal Society of London’, the best account of the events leading up to the birth of the Royal Society and of the intellectual climate in which it was formed, that has yet been written. It was a labour of love to which McKie devoted much study. Many of his findings were confirmed by Sir Geoffrey Keynes in his recent Wilkins Lecture. Written in McKie’s clear narrative style with its admirable balance like all McKie’s writings it will always be a pleasure to read. In the planning of Origins and Founders , in the choice of authors and in some of the delicate problems that arose in the editing, McKie’s intimate study of seventeenth-century science was of the utmost value. So the Royal Society now acknowledges its debt to him.