The earliest Fellows of the Royal Society

The Royal Society was granted its first charter of incorporation on 15 July 1662, its second on 22 April 1663. Both charters name the President and the members of the Council of the Society; the second empowers the President and Council within the two months immediately succeeding the grant to admit into the Society as Fellows such persons as they (or a specified majority of them) shall think fit; after the two months have elapsed the right of admitting new Fellows is to belong to the President, Council, and existing Fellows. In accordance with this grant ninety-four Fellows were admitted on 20 May 1663 and four more on 22 June 1663 ; these ninety-eight are known as ‘Original Fellows‘. The Council consisted of twenty members apart from the President. The Society had originated in a group of scientists who first met about 1645. This group held informal meetings and apparently kept no records. On 28 November 1660 its members (or some of them) determined to hold their meetings more regularly and to form themselves into an association for doing so. The association, which for convenience may be called the Philosophical Society, drew up rules, provided for funds, and kept records. The last, so far as they are adequate, show who were admitted as members and when they were admitted. The President, the members of the first and second Councils, and the Original Fellows of the Royal Society, had almost all been members of the Philosophical Society; the dates when they became members of the Philosophical Society are therefore of greater interest, both for the history of the Society and for their individual biographies, than the dates of their appearance as Fellows of the Royal Society. The first of the following lists gives these dates, which are here brought together for the first time. In the course of compilation a few names were found of members or apparent members of the earlier society who did not become Fellows of the later one until after 22 June 1663 ; these names have been brought together in a second list. A third list contains the names of those members of the Philosophical Society who never became Fellows of the Royal Society as constituted under the Second Charter.