• Collections

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    The Royal Society's collections are of great importance to the history of science and provide a record of scientific achievement over 350 years.

    Researchers and members of the public are welcome to visit the library and access the collections. Please contact us before your visit to ensure you get the most out of it.

    Digital images of items in the collection are available in the picture library. 

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    Quick search

    Quick search tips

    • This is a broad search and the results will include all the records that contain your search text in any field. If you search for "Hodgkin" in "past fellows", for example, you will find not only Dorothy and Sir Alan Hodgkin, but also the people who nominated them for the Fellowship or whom they nominated, and any others in whose records that name happens to appear.
    • If you would like to search with more precision, please click on one of the headings on the left to bring up a more detailed search form for that catalog.
    • To search for a Fellow, select 'Past Fellows' and enter their surname.

    Search the Royal Society Archive catalogue

    Archive search tips

    • Use of asterisk * works on any field or word, not only on names in the title field, eg mathematic* will find mathematics, mathematician, mathematically. It can also be used within a word to retrieve alternative spellings, eg Westmor*land will retrieve both Westmorland and Westmoreland. The Resource includes historical information, so you may need to search for historical as well as modern terms, eg Cumberland and Cumbria
    • The archive's reference numbers denote a place in a taxonomy. In smaller collections they are highlighted as a hyperlink. Clicking on the RefNo activates the tree structure of the database and allows you to view the record in the context of the whole collection. Clicking on another item in the tree will take you to that record.
    • To search only part of the archive, you can choose from the drop-down list above or browse the full set of collections to find the prefix or reference number that delineates the set you want, and enter that code into the "other" field. You don"t need to append an asterisk.
    • Please be aware that some areas of the collection are only fully searchable using our card index. If you would like further advice about this please contact us via library@royalsociety.org.

    Search the Royal Society Fellowship


    The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Archive Resource is a database of biographical information on past Fellows of the Royal Society from 1660 onwards. The Sackler Foundation generously funded the creation of the Resource.

    The Resource contains names and titles, dates of birth, death and election to the Society, offices held, Society medals won and lectures delivered. Records also include details of a Fellow's education, career, and membership of other societies.

    General search tips

    • Genetic OR Ethics will give you records with either Genetic or Ethics in the title field
    • Genetic AND Ethics will give you records with both Genetic and Ethics in the title field
    • Genetic Ethics PHRASE will give you records where the exact phrase "Genetic Ethics" occurs in the title field
    • Once you have entered an initial search, you can go back and refine your results using Widen, Narrow or Exclude.
    • Use an asterisk for truncation: gene* will find "genes", "genetics", "genetically" and so on.

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