18 RECORD OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY 



John Wallis, D.D. 

 Edmund Waller, Esq. 

 Joseph Williamson, Esq. 

 Francis Willughby, Esq. 

 William Winde, Esq. 



John Winthrop, Esq. 

 Matthew Wren, Esq. 

 Thomas Wren, M.D. 

 Christofer Wren, LL.D. 

 Edmund Wylde, Esq. 



A special interest is attached to the foregoing list, inasmuch as 

 it affords an indication of the spirit in which the early founders 

 of the Royal Society chose the men whom they wished to be 

 associated with them in one common fellowship for the further- 

 ance of natural knowledge. The first feature to be noticed is the 

 comparatively small proportion of men who had much claim to 

 be considered scientific. The number of such men in the whole 

 community at that time was certainly not large. 1 At one of the 

 meetings, held eighteen months before the granting of the Charter, 

 it had been resolved ' that the stated number of this Society be 

 five and fifty ', as if the intention had been to confine the member- 

 ship to those who were actually engaged in the pursuit of 

 experimental philosophy or at least had shown themselves to 

 be keenly interested in its progress. But during the interval 

 between December 12, 1660, and May 20, 1663, a much wider 

 conception was entertained as to the composition of the infant 

 society. The men of science, properly so called, who appear in 

 the list, are hardly one-fifth of the whole number. But they 

 include some whose names are held in remembrance wherever the 

 history of modern science is known the Honourable Robert 

 Boyle, the most prominent man of science of his day, who in 

 many branches of investigation opened out paths that have led 

 to the modern development of chemistiy and physics ; John 

 Wilkins, Warden of Wadham College, afterwards Bishop of 

 Chester, one of the ablest and most active in the group of 

 originators of the Royal Society, who, besides successively filling 

 high offices in the Church and the Universities, produced a 

 series of scientific writings that displayed great mathematical 

 acumen, and forecasted the submarine navigation of the sea and 

 the practicability of the navigation of the air ; John Wallis, 



1 In Boyle's letter of February 16, 1646-7, already quoted, after his eulogium of the 

 members of the ' invisible college ', he concludes with the recital of ' their chiefest fault, 

 which is very incident to almost all good things ; and that is, that there is not enough of 

 them '. 



