Sir William Jones, Sir Joseph Banks, and the Royal Society

Abstract

NOW that the correspondence of Sir William Jones, F. R. S. (1746-1794), is available and the information there can be integrated with the data long available in his published works (1), scholars can appreciate the extensiveness and importance of his association with Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820). The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to study Jones’s association with that gifted President of the Royal Society, as well as Jones’s botanical work and his founding-presidency of the Asiatic Society in terms of that association and of the history of science; and second, to study the Royal Society’s influence upon Jones and his Asiatic Society.