Oliver Lodge
For the British poet and author, see Oliver W. F. Lodge Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, holder of key patents for, radio, he identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz' proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures, Lodge demonstrated an early radio wave detector he named the "coherer". In 1898 he was awarded the "syntonic" patent by the United States Patent Office. Lodge was Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1920. Oliver Lodge was born in 1851 at'The Views', Penkhull a rural village high above the emerging Potteries of North Staffordshire in what is now Stoke-on-Trent, educated at Adams' Grammar School, Shropshire, his parents were Oliver Lodge – a ball clay merchant at Wolstanton, Staffordshire – and his wife, Grace, née Heath. Lodge was their first child, altogether they had eight sons and a daughter. Lodge's siblings included historian; when Lodge was 12, the family moved house a short distance north along the valley ridge, to Wolstanton.
There, at Moreton House on the southern tip of Wolstanton Marsh, he took over a large outbuilding for his first scientific experiments during the long school holidays. In 1865, Lodge, at the age of 14, left his schooling and entered his father's business as an agent for B. Fayle & Co selling Purbeck blue clay to the pottery manufacturers; this work sometimes entailed him travelling as far as Scotland. He continued to assist his father until he reached the age of 22, his father's growing wealth from trade enabled him to move the family to Chatterley House, when Lodge was 18. From there Lodge attended physics lectures in London, attended the Wedgwood Institute in nearby Burslem. At Chatterley House, just a mile south of Etruria Hall where Wedgwood had experimented, Lodge's Autobiography recalled that "something like real experimentation" began for him around 1869. Growing affluent in a booming industrial economy, the family moved again in 1875 – this time to the nearby Watlands Hall at the top of Porthill Bank between Middleport and Wolstanton.
Lodge obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London in 1875 and gained the title of Doctor of Science in 1877. At Wolstanton he experimented with producing a wholly new "electromagnetic light" in 1879 and 1880, paving the way for experimental success. During this time, he lectured at Bedford College, London. Lodge left the Potteries district in 1881, to take the post of Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the newly founded University College, Liverpool. In 1900 Lodge moved from Liverpool back to the Midlands and became the first principal of the new Birmingham University, remaining there until his retirement in 1919, he oversaw the start of the move of the university from Edmund Street in the city centre to its present Edgbaston campus. Lodge was awarded the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1898 and was knighted by King Edward VII in 1902. In 1928 he was made Freeman of Stoke-on-Trent. Lodge married Mary Fanny Alexander Marshall at St George's Church, Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1877.
They had twelve children, six boys and six girls: Oliver William Foster, Francis Brodie, Lionel, Violet, Honor, Norah and Rosalynde. Four of his sons went into business using Lodge's inventions. Brodie and Alec created the Lodge Plug Company, which manufactured spark plugs for cars and aeroplanes. Lionel and Noel founded a company that produced an electrostatic device for cleaning factory and smelter smoke in 1913, called the Lodge Fume Deposit Company Limited. Oliver, the eldest son, became a author. After his retirement in 1920, Lodge and his wife settled in Normanton House, near Lake in Wiltshire, a few miles from Stonehenge. Lodge and his wife are buried at St. Michael's, Wilsford cum Lake, their eldest son Oliver and eldest daughter Violet are buried at the same church. In 1873 J. C. Maxwell published A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, by 1876 Lodge was studying it intently, but Lodge was limited in mathematical physics both by aptitude and training, his first two papers were a description of a mechanism that could serve to illustrate electrical phenomena such as conduction and polarization.
Indeed, Lodge is best known for his advocacy and elaboration of Maxwell's aether theory – a deprecated model postulating a wave-bearing medium filling all space. He explained his views on the aether in "Modern Views of Electricity" and continued to defend those ideas well into the twentieth century; as early as 1879, Lodge became interested in generating electromagnetic waves, something Maxwell had never considered. This interest continued throughout the 1880s. First, he thought in terms of generating light waves with high frequencies rather than radio waves with their much lower frequencies. Second, his good friend George FitzGerald assured him that "ether waves could not be genera
Physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its motion, behavior through space and time, that studies the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, its main goal is to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy the oldest. Over much of the past two millennia, chemistry and certain branches of mathematics, were a part of natural philosophy, but during the scientific revolution in the 17th century these natural sciences emerged as unique research endeavors in their own right. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, the boundaries of physics which are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics explain the fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new avenues of research in academic disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy. Advances in physics enable advances in new technologies.
For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism and nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have transformed modern-day society, such as television, domestic appliances, nuclear weapons. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. Early civilizations dating back to beyond 3000 BCE, such as the Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, the Indus Valley Civilization, had a predictive knowledge and a basic understanding of the motions of the Sun and stars; the stars and planets were worshipped, believed to represent gods. While the explanations for the observed positions of the stars were unscientific and lacking in evidence, these early observations laid the foundation for astronomy, as the stars were found to traverse great circles across the sky, which however did not explain the positions of the planets. According to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy.
Egyptian astronomers left monuments showing knowledge of the constellations and the motions of the celestial bodies, while Greek poet Homer wrote of various celestial objects in his Iliad and Odyssey. Natural philosophy has its origins in Greece during the Archaic period, when pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales rejected non-naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena and proclaimed that every event had a natural cause, they proposed ideas verified by reason and observation, many of their hypotheses proved successful in experiment. The Western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, this resulted in a decline in intellectual pursuits in the western part of Europe. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire resisted the attacks from the barbarians, continued to advance various fields of learning, including physics. In the sixth century Isidore of Miletus created an important compilation of Archimedes' works that are copied in the Archimedes Palimpsest. In sixth century Europe John Philoponus, a Byzantine scholar, questioned Aristotle's teaching of physics and noting its flaws.
He introduced the theory of impetus. Aristotle's physics was not scrutinized until John Philoponus appeared, unlike Aristotle who based his physics on verbal argument, Philoponus relied on observation. On Aristotle's physics John Philoponus wrote: “But this is erroneous, our view may be corroborated by actual observation more than by any sort of verbal argument. For if you let fall from the same height two weights of which one is many times as heavy as the other, you will see that the ratio of the times required for the motion does not depend on the ratio of the weights, but that the difference in time is a small one, and so, if the difference in the weights is not considerable, that is, of one is, let us say, double the other, there will be no difference, or else an imperceptible difference, in time, though the difference in weight is by no means negligible, with one body weighing twice as much as the other”John Philoponus' criticism of Aristotelian principles of physics served as an inspiration for Galileo Galilei ten centuries during the Scientific Revolution.
Galileo cited Philoponus in his works when arguing that Aristotelian physics was flawed. In the 1300s Jean Buridan, a teacher in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris, developed the concept of impetus, it was a step toward the modern ideas of momentum. Islamic scholarship inherited Aristotelian physics from the Greeks and during the Islamic Golden Age developed it further placing emphasis on observation and a priori reasoning, developing early forms of the scientific method; the most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics, written by Ibn al-Haytham, in which he conclusively disproved the ancient Greek idea about vision, but came up with a new theory. In the book, he presented a study of the phenomenon of the camera obscura (his thousand-year-old
Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851
The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 is an institution founded in 1850 to administer the international exhibition of 1851 called the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations. The Great Exhibition was held in The Crystal Palace in England; the enormous building was designed by Joseph Paxton for the Exhibition and construction was supervised by William Cubitt using a cast iron space frame for the glass panes, with wooden beams for flooring. The founding President of the Commission was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and its chief administrator was Henry Cole; the current president is Princess Royal. The exhibition was a great popular and financial success, made a huge surplus of £186,000. An unusual decision was made to maintain the Royal Commission as a permanent administrative body to use the profits for charitable purposes, its revised Charter charged the Commission with "increasing the means of industrial education and extending the influence of science and art upon productive industry".
The profit from the 1851 Exhibition was invested by The Commissioners who bought 86 acres of land in South Kensington, developed as a centre of educational and cultural institutions known as "Albertopolis". These include: Imperial College Natural History Museum Royal Albert Hall Royal College of Art Royal College of Music Science Museum Victoria and Albert MuseumThe Commission's headquarters are in Imperial College and since 1891 the role of the Commission has been to provide postgraduate scholarships for students to study in Britain and abroad, former scholars include 13 Nobel Prize laureates; the Commission has capital assets of over £76 million, with an annual charitable disbursement of over £2 million. Hobhouse, Hermione; the Crystal Palace And the Great Exhibition: Science, Art And Productive Industry, the History of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-485-11575-8. 1851 Research Fellowship Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Charity Commission.
Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, registered charity no. 206123
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, a founding constituent college of the federal University of London. King's was established in 1829 by King George IV and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, when it received its first royal charter, claims to be the fourth oldest university institution in England. In 1836, King's became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London. In the late 20th century, King's grew through a series of mergers, including with Queen Elizabeth College and Chelsea College of Science and Technology, the Institute of Psychiatry, the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals and the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery. King's has five campuses: its historic Strand Campus in central London, three other Thames-side campuses and one in Denmark Hill in south London. In 2017/18, King's had a total income of £841.1 million, of which £194.4 million was from research grants and contracts.
It is the 12th largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment. It has the fifth largest endowment of any university in the United Kingdom, the largest of any in London, its academic activities are organised into nine faculties, which are subdivided into numerous departments and research divisions. King's is considered part of the'golden triangle' of research-intensive English universities alongside the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University College London, Imperial College London, The London School of Economics, it is a member of academic organisations including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, European University Association, the Russell Group. King's is home to six Medical Research Council centres and is a founding member of the King's Health Partners academic health sciences centre, Francis Crick Institute and MedCity, it is the largest European centre for graduate and post-graduate medical teaching and biomedical research, by number of students, includes the world's first nursing school, the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.
Globally, it was ranked 31st in the 2019 QS World University Rankings, 36th in the 2018 CWTS Leiden Ranking, 36th in the 2018 The World University Rankings, 46th in the 2017 ARWU. King's was ranked 42nd in the world for reputation in the annual Times Higher Education survey of academics for 2018. Nationally it was ranked 26th in the 2019 Complete University Guide, 35th in the 2019 Times/Sunday Times University Guide, 58th in the 2019 Guardian University Guide. King's alumni and staff include 12 Nobel laureates. Alumni include heads of states and intergovernmental organisations. King's College, so named to indicate the patronage of King George IV, was founded in 1829 in response to the theological controversy surrounding the founding of "London University" in 1826. London University was founded, with the backing of Utilitarians and Nonconformists, as a secular institution, intended to educate "the youth of our middling rich people between the ages of 15 or 16 and 20 or later" giving its nickname, "the godless college in Gower Street".
The need for such an institution was a result of the religious and social nature of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which educated the sons of wealthy Anglicans. The secular nature of London University was disapproved by The Establishment, indeed, "the storms of opposition which raged around it threatened to crush every spark of vital energy which remained". Thus, the creation of a rival institution represented a Tory response to reassert the educational values of The Establishment. More King's was one of the first of a series of institutions which came about in the early nineteenth century as a result of the Industrial Revolution and great social changes in England following the Napoleonic Wars. By virtue of its foundation King's has enjoyed the patronage of the monarch, the Archbishop of Canterbury as its visitor and during the nineteenth century counted among its official governors the Lord Chancellor, Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Mayor of London; the simultaneous support of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, for an Anglican King's College London and the Roman Catholic Relief Act, to lead to the granting of full civil rights to Catholics, was challenged by George Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of Winchilsea, in early 1829.
Winchilsea and his supporters wished for King's to be subject to the Test Acts, like the universities of Oxford, where only members of the Church of England could matriculate, Cambridge, where non-Anglicans could matriculate but not graduate, but this was not Wellington's intent. Winchilsea and about 150 other contributors withdrew their support of King's College London in response to Wellington's support of Catholic emancipation. In a letter to Wellington he accused the Duke to have in mind "insidious designs for the infringement of our liberty and the introduction of Popery into every department of the State"; the letter provoked a furious exchange of correspondence and Wellington accused Winchilsea of imputing him with "disgraceful and criminal motives" in setting up King's C
Liverpool Institute High School for Boys
The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys was an all-boys grammar school in the English port city of Liverpool. The school had its origins in 1825 but occupied different premises while the money was found to build a dedicated building on Mount Street; the Institute was first known as the Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts. In 1832 the name was shortened to the Liverpool Mechanics' Institution; the facade of the listed building, the entrance hall and modified school hall remain after substantial internal reconstruction was completed in the early 1990s. Its initial primary purpose as a Mechanics' Institute was to provide educational opportunities through evening classes, for working men. Lectures for the general public were provided of wide interest covering topics ranging from Arctic exploration to Shakespeare and philosophy. Luminaries like Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered talks and readings in the main lecture hall. By 1840 the Institution offered evening classes, lectures, a library and a boys' lower and upper school.
By the 1850s a formal art school was evolving from the evening classes and in 1856 this diversity was recognised by another name change – The Liverpool Institute and School of Arts. A girls' school was founded and opened in 1844 under the name Liverpool Institute High School for Girls, it was housed in a merchant's mansion across the street from the boys' school in Blackburne House provided by the generosity of George Holt and, donated to the school by his family in his memory. The school was one of the first, open to the public in the country established for the education of girls. In 1905 the Liverpool City Council took over the management of the secondary schools when the LI Board of Governors presented the school and assets to the City. From until its closure in 1985, the school was formally known as The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys or more familiarly as The Institute or The Inny to its pupils, it was an English grammar school for boys ages 11 to 18 with an excellent academic reputation built up over more than a century.
Its list of scholarships and places at Oxford University and Cambridge University runs to some 300 names – in addition to distinctions gained at the University of Liverpool and at many other prominent British universities. The school was a true measure of Liverpool's intellectual capital and its old boys could and can be found in life in many fields of professional distinction including the law, the Church, armed forces, academia and colonial administration as well as in trade and commerce; the school was closed by the city council in 1985. The Labour Party nationally opposed grammar schools – see Anthony Crosland's Circular of September 1965 required that Local Authorities bring forward schemes for comprehensive secondary education; as grammar school pupils were selected by examination at age 11, there was a long-standing push towards'comprehensive schools' from that party when it took majority control of the City Council in 1983. Demand for secondary school places in the City had dropped precipitously and there was a huge oversupply of school space as Liverpool's population contracted during the severe economic recession of the early 1980s.
The Deputy Leader of the Labour Group on Council at the time was a former LI schoolboy Derek Hatton who had left without academic distinction in 1964 and with strong feelings of dislike towards the school. However the man, Chair of the Educational Committee at the time of the decision to close the school was Dominic Brady, whose qualifications for his position amounted to being a former school caretaker. After closure, the building stood empty and neglected, the roof leaking and the walls crumbling. In 1987 it was announced that the LI Trust would grant use of the building and site to a new educational establishment. Paul McCartney had returned to his old school when with Wings he had played a concert at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool in 1979. After the school's closure in 1985, McCartney returned one night to reminisce about his school days, while he was writing his'Liverpool Oratorio'; this visit is captured in'Echoes'. McCartney was determined to save the building somehow and during a conversation with Sir George Martin, the idea of a'fame school' emerged since Martin was helping Mark Featherstone-Witty start a London secondary school with an innovative curriculum.
McCartney and Featherstone-Witty joined forces to create the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. The new company took over the Liverpool Institute Trust established in 1905; the building was re-opened in 1996 under LIPA's name. This new institute is affiliated with LJMU and is no longer a Liverpool secondary school; the city's Art College had its origins as part of the Liverpool Institute. In 1883 a new building housing the School of Art was opened around the corner on Hope Street, adjacent to the principal building housing the High School on Mount Street; the Art College by which it was known, took in talented students without formal academic credentials and the College became one of the four constituent parts of the Liverpool Polytechnic in 1970 and in 1992 Liverpool John Moores University with the School of Art and Design being housed in the Art and Design Academy. Music and musical performances were a constant theme throughout the life of the school and the M
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582, is the sixth oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's ancient universities. The university has five main campuses in the city of Edinburgh, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university; the university played an important role in leading Edinburgh to its reputation as a chief intellectual centre during the Age of Enlightenment, helped give the city the nickname of the Athens of the North. The University of Edinburgh is ranked 18th in the world by the 2019 QS World University Rankings, it is ranked as the 6th best university in Europe by the U. S. News' Best Global Universities Ranking, 7th best in Europe by the Times Higher Education Ranking; the Research Excellence Framework, a research ranking used by the UK government to determine future research funding, ranked Edinburgh 4th in the UK for research power, 11th overall. It is ranked the 78th most employable university in the world by the 2017 Global Employability University Ranking.
It is a member of both the Russell Group, the League of European Research Universities, a consortium of 21 research universities in Europe. It has the third largest endowment of any university in the United Kingdom, after the universities of Cambridge and Oxford; the annual income of the institution for 2017–18 was £949.0 million of which £279.7 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £931.3 million. Alumni of the university include some of the major figures of modern history, including 3 signatories of the American declaration of independence and 9 heads of state; as of March 2019, Edinburgh's alumni, faculty members and researches include 19 Nobel laureates, 3 Turing Award laureates, 1 Fields Medalist, 1 Abel Prize winner, 2 Pulitzer Prize winners, 2 currently-sitting UK Supreme Court Justices, several Olympic gold medallists. It continues to have links to the British Royal Family, having had the Duke of Edinburgh as its Chancellor from 1953 to 2010 and Princess Anne since 2011.
Edinburgh receives 60,000 applications every year, making it the second most popular university in the UK by volume of applications. It has 4th highest average UCAS entry tariff in Scotland, 5th overall in the UK. Founded by the Edinburgh Town Council, the university began life as a college of law using part of a legacy left by a graduate of the University of St Andrews, Bishop Robert Reid of St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney. Through efforts by the Town Council and Ministers of the City the institution broadened in scope and became formally established as a college by a Royal Charter, granted by King James VI of Scotland on 14 April 1582 after the petitioning of the Council; this was unprecedented in newly Presbyterian Scotland, as older universities in Scotland had been established through Papal bulls. Established as the "Tounis College", it opened its doors to students in October 1583. Instruction began under the charge of another St Andrews graduate Robert Rollock, it was the fourth Scottish university in a period when the richer and much more populous England had only two.
It was renamed King James's College in 1617. By the 18th century, the university was a leading centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1762, Reverend Hugh Blair was appointed by King George III as the first Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres; this formalised literature as a subject at the university and the foundation of the English Literature department, making Edinburgh the oldest centre of literary education in Britain. Before the building of Old College to plans by Robert Adam implemented after the Napoleonic Wars by the architect William Henry Playfair, the University of Edinburgh existed in a hotchpotch of buildings from its establishment until the early 19th century; the university's first custom-built building was the Old College, now Edinburgh Law School, situated on South Bridge. Its first forte in teaching was anatomy and the developing science of surgery, from which it expanded into many other subjects. From the basement of a nearby house ran the anatomy tunnel corridor.
It went under what was North College Street, under the university buildings until it reached the university's anatomy lecture theatre, delivering bodies for dissection. It was from this tunnel. Towards the end of the 19th century, Old College was becoming overcrowded and Sir Robert Rowand Anderson was commissioned to design new Medical School premises in 1875; the design incorporated a Graduation Hall, but this was seen as too ambitious. A separate building was constructed for the purpose, the McEwan Hall designed by Anderson, after funds were donated by the brewer and politician Sir William McEwan in 1894, it was presented to the University in 1897. New College was opened in 1846 as a Free Church of Scotland college of the United Free Church of Scotland. Since the 1930s it has been the home of the School of Divinity. Prior to the 1929 reunion of the Church of Scotland, candidates for the ministry in the United Free Church studied at New College, whilst candidates for the old Church of Scotland studied in the Divinity Faculty of the University of Edinburgh.
During the 1930s the two institutions came together. By the end of the 1950s, there were around 7,000 students matriculating annually. An Edinburgh Students' Representative Council was founded in 1884 by student Robert Fitzroy Bell. In 1889, the SRC voted to be housed in Teviot Row House; the Edinburgh University Sports Union, founded in 1866. The Edinburgh
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of London judges to have made a'substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science'. Fellowship of the Society, the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour, awarded to many eminent scientists from history including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Ernest Rutherford, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Dorothy Hodgkin, Alan Turing and Francis Crick. More fellowship has been awarded to Stephen Hawking, Tim Hunt, Elizabeth Blackburn, Tim Berners-Lee, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Atta-ur Rahman, Andre Geim, James Dyson, Ajay Kumar Sood, Subhash Khot, Elon Musk and around 8,000 others in total, including over 280 Nobel Laureates since 1900; as of October 2018, there are 1689 living Fellows and Honorary Members, of which over 60 are Nobel Laureates.
Fellowship of the Royal Society has been described by The Guardian newspaper as “the equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar” with several institutions celebrating their announcement each year. Up to 60 new Fellows and foreign members are elected annually in late April or early May, from a pool of around 700 proposed candidates each year. New Fellows can only be nominated by existing Fellows for one of the fellowships described below: Every year, up to 52 new Fellows are elected from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations which make up around 90% of the society; each candidate is considered on their merits and can be proposed from any sector of the scientific community. Fellows are elected for life on the basis of excellence in science and are entitled to use the post-nominal letters FRS. See Category:Fellows of the Royal Society and Category:Female Fellows of the Royal Society; every year, Fellows elect up to ten new Foreign Members. Like Fellows, Foreign Members are elected for life through peer review on the basis of excellence in science.
As of 2016 there are around 165 Foreign Members, who are entitled to use the post-nominal ForMemRS. See Category:Foreign Members of the Royal Society. Honorary Fellowship is an honorary academic title awarded to candidates who have given distinguished service to the cause of science, but do not have the kind of scientific achievements required of Fellows or Foreign Members. Honorary Fellows include Bill Bryson, Melvyn Bragg, Robin Saxby, David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville and Onora O'Neill. Honorary Fellows are entitled to use the post nominal letters FRS. Others including John Maddox, Patrick Moore and Lisa Jardine were elected as honorary fellows, see Category:Honorary Fellows of the Royal Society. Statute 12 is a legacy mechanism for electing members before official honorary membership existed in 1997. Fellows elected under statute 12 include 4th Earl of Selborne. Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom such as Margaret Thatcher, Neville Chamberlain,Ramsay Macdonald and H. H. Asquith were elected under statute 12, see Category:Fellows of the Royal Society.
The Council of the Royal Society can recommend members of the British Royal Family for election as Royal Fellows of the Royal Society. As of 2016 there are five royal fellows: Charles, Prince of Wales elected 1978 Anne, Princess Royal elected 1987 Prince Edward, Duke of Kent elected 1990 Prince William, Duke of Cambridge elected 2009 Prince Andrew, Duke of York elected 2013Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II is not a Royal Fellow, but provides her patronage to the Society as all reigning British monarchs have done since Charles II of England. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was elected under statute 12, not as a Royal Fellow; the election of new fellows is announced annually in May, after their nomination and a period of peer-reviewed selection. Each candidate for Fellowship or Foreign Membership is nominated by two Fellows of the Royal Society, who sign a certificate of proposal. Nominations required at least five fellows to support each nomination by the proposer, criticised for establishing an old-boy network and elitist gentlemen's club.
The certificate of election includes a statement of the principal grounds on which the proposal is being made. There is no limit on the number of nominations made each year. In 2015, there were 654 candidates for election as Fellows and 106 candidates for Foreign Membership; the Council of the Royal Society oversees the selection process and appoints 10 subject area committees, known as Sectional Committees, to recommend the strongest candidates for election to Fellowship. The final list of up to 52 Fellowship candidates and up to 10 Foreign Membership candidates is confirmed by the Council in April and a secret ballot of Fellows is held at a meeting in May. A candidate is elected if she secures two-thirds of votes of those Fellows present and voting. A maximum of 18 Fellowships can be allocated to candidates from Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences. A further maximum of 6 can be ‘Honorary’, ‘General’ or ‘Royal’ Fellows. Nominations for Fellowship are peer reviewed by sectional committees, each with 15 members and a chair.
Members of the 10 sectional committees change every 3 years to mitigate in-group bias, each group covers different
