ROYAL SOCIETY, AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT

John Winthrop Jr. (1606–1676), the first colonial American member of the Royal Society of London, was made a fellow of the society in the early 1660s, even before it received its charter. By 1783, fifty-two additional members had been elected from the North American British colonies, nineteen of them royal governors and hence in a position to encourage investigations in "natural philosophy." The remaining thirty-three were chosen because their interests made them likely to carry out such investigations. Winthrop—Connecticut's governor for eighteen years—satisfied both expectations. The telescope he gave to Harvard College made possible observations that were useful to Isaac Newton (1642–1727), and among his own contributions on subjects ranging from alchemy to zoology was a paper showing that maize, or Indian corn, is a nutritious human food.

Winthrop was in London seeking a royal charter for his colony when he was elected, but most other colonials were nominated by society members and elected in absentia. Since few of them could attend meetings, for ninety years these overseas members were treated like other Englishmen living forty miles or more from London; they were exempt from all membership fees. Beginning in 1752, however, the colonials also were assessed to help pay for the society's publication of its Philosophical Transactions. Colonial residents vied to put "F.R.S." after their names, and the society continued to welcome those qualified to contribute to its Philosophical Transactions, which printed at least 260 papers from the British colonies of North America prior to the American Revolution.

The most significant American contributor of the next generation was Cotton Mather (1663–1728), who sent his Curiosa Americana to the society over the course of twelve years (1712–1724) in the form of eighty-two letters. Mather's observations, both original and copied from ephemeral publications, were read to the society, although only a few were published in its Transactions. Many of his reports embodied the superstitions of his time, yet Mather did describe smallpox inoculation in Boston, of which he himself had learned from the Philosophical Transactions, and he was one of the first to study plant hybridization. He also differed from earlier colonial contributors by his willingness not merely to collect data, but to speculate on its meaning as well.

The Royal Society not only received and disseminated the observations of its members, but also guided research in directions thought to be rewarding. Resident members helped to provide supplies needed for experiments overseas. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was stimulated by the apparatus for demonstrating static electricity sent to Philadelphia by society member Peter Collinson (1694–1768), who had earlier motivated the plant collecting of the American botanist John Bartram (1699–1777). In turn, it was to the Royal Society that Franklin submitted accounts of his experiments. After being read to the society, some of his letters were published in London's Gentlemen's Magazine, then collected in his 1751 pamphlet Experiments and Observations on Electricity. In 1753 the society awarded Franklin its highest honor, the Copley Medal, for his electricity studies. Transatlantic collegiality was further underscored when the reorganized American Philosophical Society, for which Franklin was the leading promoter, was established in 1769 in Philadelphia and patterned on the Royal Society of London.

See alsoBotany; Franklin, Benjamin .

bibliography

Denny, Margaret. "The Royal Society and American Scholars." Scientific Monthly 65 (1947): 415–427.

Frick, George F. "The Royal Society in America." In The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War. Edited by Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Brown. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

Stearns, Raymond P. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

Charles Boewe