I'm in the library of the Royal Society
in London and the Society has one of the
best autograph books in the world and
this is Keith Moore who's our librarian
who is going to introduce me to the book
and show me the most interesting
signatures here oh here's the Royal
Society's charter book and if we open it
you'll see immediately what's going on
here it opens with the Royal coat of
arms because of course we're the Royal
Society and then you will find the Royal
Society's own coat of arms with the
motto nullius in verba take nobody's
word for it and then the reason it's
called the charter book is because the
Royal Society's charters are reproduced
in the text on the vellum here this is
not on paper this is animal skin they're
rather stiffer than paper they're
slightly slick to the touch I'm wearing
gloves so it's harder to feel that but
you can actually if you run your fingers
over you can feel the NAP of the the
animal but you'll see this is really
where the book gets very interesting
indeed the first page of the signatures
and the head of the list here is Charles
the second he was there all studies
first patron the man who put the royal
into the Royal Society the other Royals
here the one you've probably heard of
his Prince Rupert who was interested in
science is that ribbit from Prince
Rupert's drop it is indeed so he did do
experiments after all Society and
elsewhere as the glass drops that he
produced are quite famous each
successive monarch and therefore each
successive patron of the Royal Society
gets their own highly decorated royal
page and if I turn the page here this is
the first page where you get the
fellowship proper so these are the
leading scientists from 1660 onwards and
the book is a continuous record of all
of the fellows of the Royal Society will
one or two notable exceptions and if you
examine this page you'll immediately
begin to see
the great scientists of the 17th century
here we got there then said he would
Robert Hooke down Bolton squeezed into
the foot of the page yes John Wallace
here and John Wilkins Christopher Wren's
on this page as well and Christopher
Wren who built sand Paul's Cathedral in
London that's absolutely right
well then let's turn the page and see if
we can see Newton and here is quite
quite a small signature
and you can see immediately the man
under Isaac Newton is being gradually
raised because Newton so popular people
was point to his signature and run their
fingers along it and therefore it's just
erasing the ink from the surface of the
vellum people say is that really a sick
Newton and rub out the poor guy
underneath here's John Flamsteed the
astronomer royal who is one of the
people that you argued with and it's
interesting that he didn't put his name
in the column he's put it slightly to
one side and just above a Newton
D is that just a coincidence or do you
think this it could be a coincidence but
it's it's it's a nice idea that he just
might have decided to get one up on the
great man
this is Edmund Halley the astronomer sea
captain mathematician and many other
things besides we know how many
signatures are in this play I don't
think we've ever counted them and it's
interesting that some of them you can
see have actually been crossed out
that's probably non-payment of
subscriptions to the Royal Society Hugo
is a another royal page this is one of
the George's again not terribly colorful
but we'll come to some really highly
decorated pages quite soon it is in its
way an almost complete history of
science it's stored in controlled
environmental vaults so it's brought out
when fellows sign the book once here new
fellows in terms of its value nothing
like this has ever been sold at auction
so it's anybody's guess how much this
would cost you but I can see here well
yes sir he is young Davey just being
elected a fellow the Ross ID Humphrey
Davy there so he signed the book this is
John Dalton who first prepared the
theory of atoms in its modern form
yeah again this is a royal page a
roleplay just created winner a new
monarch is put on the throne they become
patron of the Royal Society as a serving
monarch therefore a new page is created
for them this is William
this is Charles darling are these
scientists already famous when they sign
the book
not necessarily Darwin is elected in
1839 so 20 years before on the Origin of
Species is is written and published at
this stage he's just returned from his
Beagle voyage and he's sorting out
specimens and beginning to lecture and
talk about what he's seen on his voyages
so he's not really at the point where
he's a leading scientist so he's still
quite a young figure but what their
eyesight he is very good at is
recognizing potential and backing
winners but here's Queen Victoria
it is a whole swathe of scientific
endeavor in one volume here we have the
signature of one of the most famous
American scientists this is Benjamin
Franklin
of course he lived in London and he was
on council of the Royal Society every
time I look at it I find new signatures
and this is really as close as one can
get to many of these scientists to see
something that's actually been written
by them this one is one of my favorite
signatures this is the signature of
Mendeleev every time there are Russian
visitors I showed them the signature and
just in the interests of balance here we
have Alfred Russel Wallace we saw
Darwin's signature so here's the other
big figure in the evolution story as a
royal page 1901 and you have the four
corners of Empire here so you have the
ostrich kangaroo all that is an elephant
here and beaver for Canada presumably
see Rutherford's right at the foot of
this one
this george v thought of it and the
future King Edward the eighth who was
only King for a short time before he
implicated we're coming increasingly up
to date this is the 20th century and two
good signatures at the top of this page
he is Sigmund Freud and the Charter book
was taken to him one of the very rare
instances where that's happened Freud
had gotten out of the continent so this
is the period when the Nazis were coming
to power he had to escape from his home
longtime home in Vienna and he ended up
in London in Hampstead so the Charter
book was taken to Hampstead for him to
sign he was quite infirm at that time
and there are some nice photographs of
Freud in the garden of his Hampstead
home with the Charter book and look
underneath we've got Julian Huxley there
a great great scientific family Huxley
of course a fantastic girl zoologist and
a great figure in popularizing science
she is Max Born look at dad
the max born of courses Feinstein's
great correspondent a fantastic
physicist Einstein is one of those
signatures we wish we had in the book
and we don't know why the Royal Society
didn't manage to get him but he was a
fellow he was a fellow he was elected
after his his great works and the Nobel
Prize in 1921 he was certainly in London
during the 1930s in 1933 but for some
reason we didn't manage to get him for
the Charter book and then off he went to
the u.s. of course this is Niels Bohr
the first person to apply quantum ideas
to the structure of the atom so this is
1945 the first women were elected to the
Royal Society there were two of them
Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjorie Stevenson
Lonsdale the one people have really
heard of so here's Kathleen Lonsdale see
it's Marjorie Stevenson's who else do we
have here well he is his Barnes Wallis
of a bouncing bomb Fame on the same page
and here we have Glenn Siebel after whom
the elements seaborgium was named and
also discovered a lot of the
transuranium elements his Frank Whittle
the inventor of the jet engine is the
Linus Pauling down here is that all -
yes and here's Dorothy ball Needham this
is max from Lowry who was one the people
who was very important in the
development of crystallography here we
go now this is the current Royal page so
the Queen is our current patron he is
head of the list there but many other
Royals are on that page so Prince
Charles is on that Prince William
you
so this year so this is the Japanese
Emperor who's very good marine biologist
so he gets to sign and I think we have
Gustavus Sweden on there as well
this is Lisa Meitner the woman scientist
after whom element 109 was named Peter
Higgs his signature gives mass to the
book
whoa and he is almost next door to
Margaret Thatcher who as Prime Minister
was elected she caused a big row and no
Prime Minister has been elected since
then I'm Cassandra and underneath is
David Attenborough the world famous
naturalist you get pages where you get
four or five fantastically big figures
and you know it's it's ones better than
the next almost so you do get very very
excited when you're looking at it if
here's another famous name what was the
experience like of actually signing the
book mostly well I will I must say I was
quite nervous and you can see it's not a
very elegant signature but I didn't at
least blot it even though my name's in
the same book as Charles Darwin or some
of these other people
one couldn't possibly imagine that I'm
on the same level as them but it's still
quite nice to be recognised this is the
end of the book well not quite the end
of the book so this is the last input
intake of Fellows of the Royal Society
from from last year from 2013 now you
can see there are blank spaces here
there's a blank space for the obligation
that has to be written in and columns
and columns of vellum waiting to be
filled up and this we hope will be the
great scientists of the future so if
you're looking at this movie is that you
are you one day going to be in the pages
of the Royal Society as a signature in
its charter book you have to be very
good to get there but in a way that's an
incentive to do great science
you