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British fellows of the Royal Society

  • James Clerk MaxwellJames Clerk Maxwell was three years old, and one phrase was never out of his mouth: "what's the go o' that?" His mother recorded it in 1834, describing a boy…
  • J. J. ThomsonJ. J. Thomson, born on the 18th of December 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, grew up in a household shaped by antiquarian books and a mother rooted in the…
  • James ChadwickIn February 1932, after only about two weeks at the laboratory bench, James Chadwick sent a letter to the journal Nature with a deliberately tentative title…
  • Charles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin once jotted his thoughts about marriage on two scraps of paper, drawing two columns headed "Marry" and "Not Marry".
  • Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill was born on the 30th of November 1874 inside Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home his family had held for generations in Oxfordshire.
  • Lord ByronLord Byron got up at two in the afternoon. By the time he sat down to dinner, the house around him resounded with the unarbitrated quarrels of ten horses…
  • John RoebuckJohn Roebuck of Kinneil died in Edinburgh on the 17th of July 1794, but he left behind a world his own hands had helped build.
  • Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher arrived at 10 Downing Street on the 4th of May 1979 and kept a portrait of her Oxford chemistry tutor on the wall throughout her time…
  • James CookOn the 14th of February 1779, on a beach at Kealakekua Bay, James Cook fell among the Hawaiians he had come to know. He was a British Royal Navy officer…
  • James Prescott JouleJames Prescott Joule was born on the 24th of December 1818, the son of a wealthy brewer, in Salford. The unit of energy that powers every calculation in…
  • Francis CrickOn his death bed, Francis Crick was editing a manuscript. "He was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end," said his…
  • Ernest RutherfordErnest Rutherford was born on the 30th of August 1871 in Brightwater, New Zealand, the fourth of twelve children, and he died with a burial spot beside Isaac…
  • John LockeJohn Locke composed his own obituary in Latin, and it begins with a command to a passerby. "Stay traveller: near this place lies JOHN LOCKE." The tablet, he…
  • Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin Disraeli climbed what he called "the top of the greasy pole" to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, not once but twice, despite arriving at…
  • Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley was born on the 24th of March 1733 in Birstall, near Batley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, into a family of English Dissenters who…
  • Isaac NewtonSir Isaac Newton said his mother told him he was so small at birth that he could have fit inside a quart mug. He was born prematurely on Christmas Day, the…
  • Clement AttleeClement Attlee walked into Buckingham Palace on the 26th of July 1945 to be appointed Prime Minister. King George VI stood waiting.
  • James Watt"I can think of nothing else but this machine." Those words belong to James Watt, the Scottish inventor, engineer and chemist born in Greenock on the 19th of…
  • Marc Isambard BrunelMarc Isambard Brunel arrived into the world on the 25th of April 1769. He was born on a family farm in Hacqueville, Normandy.
  • Matthew BoultonMatthew Boulton stood at the furnace of the modern world. Born in Birmingham on the 3rd of September 1728, he spent his life turning that city into something…
  • Robert StephensonRobert Stephenson was born on the 16th of October 1803 at Willington Quay, east of Newcastle upon Tyne, to a father who would become known to history as the…
  • Paul DiracPaul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on the 8th of August 1902 in Bristol, England, and died on the 20th of October 1984 in Tallahassee, Florida.
  • Robert HookeRobert Hooke died in London on the 3rd of March 1703, alone in his room at Gresham College, blind and bedridden. When his belongings were searched, a chest…
  • Alan TuringAlan Turing once chained his tea mug to a radiator pipe at Bletchley Park so it could not be stolen. In the first week of every June he cycled to the office…
  • Stephen HawkingStephen Hawking spent his final years communicating at roughly one word per minute, twitching a single cheek muscle to select letters from a screen.
  • Demis HassabisDemis Hassabis was born on the 27th of July 1976 in North London. He began playing chess at the age of four and reached a master standard by thirteen.
  • Josiah WedgwoodJosiah Wedgwood was baptised on the 12th of July 1730, the thirteenth and last child of a Staffordshire potting family, in a village where every pot-works…
  • Humphry DavyIn 1799, Humphry Davy breathed sixteen quarts of a gas for nearly seven minutes, and it absolutely intoxicated him. He called it laughing gas, and he laughed.
  • James ThornhillJames Thornhill was knighted on the 2nd of May 1720, becoming the first native-born English artist ever to receive that honor.
  • Joseph LockeJoseph Locke was born in Attercliffe, Sheffield on the 9th of August 1805. He moved to Barnsley when he was five years old.
  • Max BornMax Born shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for work he had completed nearly three decades earlier. The delay was not an oversight.
  • Christopher WrenChristopher Wren looked down from the dome of St Paul's Cathedral and, according to a 19th-century legend, checked quietly on what he called "my greatest…
  • David AttenboroughDavid Attenborough turned 100 years old on the 8th of May 2026, and the Royal Albert Hall filled with singers, filmmakers, composers, and royalty to mark the…
  • Michael FaradayMichael Faraday could not do trigonometry. His mathematical abilities were limited to the simplest algebra. Yet James Clerk Maxwell, the physicist who turned…
  • Edward GibbonIt was on the night of the 27th of June 1787, between eleven and midnight, that Edward Gibbon wrote the last lines of his life's great work in a summer-house…
  • Arthur EvansArthur Evans knelt in a flower-covered hill on the Greek island of Crete in March 1900, and within a few months he had uncovered one of the most complex…
  • Henry BessemerHenry Bessemer was born on the 19th of January 1813 in the village of Charlton, near Hitchin in Hertfordshire, into a family already fluent in the language…
  • Edmund CartwrightEdmund Cartwright entered the world on the 24th of April 1743 at Marnham in Nottinghamshire. He was the fourth son born to William Cartwright and his wife…
  • John Harris (writer)John Harris entered the world around 1666 in Shropshire. He carried a quiet ambition that led him to Trinity College, Oxford.
  • Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell was born on the 18th of May 1872 in a country house called Ravenscroft, in Trellech, Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent liberal…
  • Arthur EddingtonArthur Stanley Eddington stood at the center of one of the most dramatic moments in twentieth-century science. On the 29th of May 1919, during a total solar…
  • John Stewart BellJohn Stewart Bell was born in Belfast on the 28th of July 1928, into a working-class family where neither his parents nor any of his three older siblings had…
  • Edmond HalleyEdmond Halley is remembered for a comet he never saw. He predicted its return in 1758, sixteen years after his death at the age of 85, and the comet was…
  • John TyndallJohn Tyndall died on the 4th of December 1893 from an accidental overdose of chloral hydrate, administered by his own wife.
  • Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron HollandHenry Richard Vassall-Fox entered the world at Winterslow House in Wiltshire on the 21st of November 1773. His father Stephen Fox, the 2nd Baron Holland…
  • John SmeatonJohn Smeaton called himself a civil engineer at a time when that phrase did not yet exist. Born on the 8th of June 1724 in Austhorpe, Leeds, he would spend…
  • Joseph ChamberlainJoseph Chamberlain never became Prime Minister. And yet Winston Churchill wrote that he was the man who "made the weather" in British politics.