John Wilkins was one of the founding Fellows of the Royal Society and is considered to be one of the key figures in the Society's development. In the years before 1660, he gathered together a group of experimentalists at Wadham College Oxford, where he was Warden. Though a supporter of Cromwell, he linked his group to like-minded Royalists in London upon the Restoration of Charles II. Thus the Royal Society was born, spanning political divides, as an organisation dedicated to experimental learning. Wilkins also made the first ever bequest to the Royal Society, of £400 in 1675 (worth about £50,000 today).
Brian Mercer, inventor of Netlon and Tensar, materials which are quite literally woven into much of the fabric of the modern world from highway crash barriers to fishing nets- bequeathed 10 million from his estate to the Royal Society in 1999. Council has used his gift for the Brian Mercer Awards for Innovation supporting the invention and discovery of novel materials and processes related to the built environment. The awards play a crucial part in taking these findings from the initial research and development stages to commercial viability. Through professional investment management, this endowed fund has grown from its original £10 million to nearly £13 million while providing income for awards of £400,000 annually for the past five years.
The Library recently received a generous bequest of scientific books from the estate of the late Mrs Peggy Cooper (née Filer) of Surrey. Originally purchased by Mrs Cooper’s father F E Filer, the 28 books added to our catalogue date from the 1850s to the 1930s and have strengthened our collection of works in late Victorian natural history significantly. Among the highlights is ‘Lectures on the Physiology of Plants’ (1886) by Sydney Howard Vines FRS, one of the earliest student textbooks on plant metabolism and growth. The topic of apiculture, much in the news recently with stories of declining honeybee numbers, is covered in two delightful works, ‘Bees and bee-keeping; scientific and practical’ (1886) by Frank Cheshire. Many of the books are in handsome decorative bindings, including ‘Flowers of the Field’ (1893) by the Reverend C A Johns.