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Fellows of the Royal Society

  • Elon MuskElon Reeve Musk sold a video game he wrote himself at age twelve for approximately $500. The game was called Blastar, built in BASIC, and sold to a magazine…
  • Carl LinnaeusCarl Linnaeus, born on the 23rd of May 1707 in the village of Råshult, in the countryside of Småland, southern Sweden, gave the living world a name for every…
  • James Beaumont NeilsonJames Beaumont Neilson was born in Shettleston on the 22nd of June 1792, the son of a millwright who had once partnered in one of Glasgow's ironworks.
  • Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of WellingtonArthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was born in Dublin in 1769 as the sixth of nine children, and died in 1852 holding the rank of Field Marshal and…
  • Alfred, Lord TennysonAlfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August 1809 in Somersby, a small village in Lincolnshire, and by the time he died on the 6th of October 1892, lines…
  • MontesquieuMontesquieu, born Charles Louis de Secondat on the 18th of January 1689, grew up in a château 25 kilometres south of Bordeaux, in southwest France.
  • Leonhard EulerPierre-Simon Laplace told his colleagues to read Leonhard Euler, calling him the master of us all. The man he was describing was a Swiss polymath born in…
  • Johann BernoulliJohann Bernoulli arrived at the University of Basel not to study mathematics, but medicine. His father, a Basel apothecary named Nicolaus Bernoulli, had…
  • Adam SmithAdam Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory, and while discussing free trade, he walked straight into a huge tanning pit.
  • Abraham ReesAbraham Rees spent the last eighteen years of his life finishing a project that had consumed decades of his energy: a cyclopaedia in forty-five volumes that…
  • John Russell, 1st Earl RussellJohn Russell, 1st Earl Russell stood barely five feet five inches tall, and his political opponents never let him forget it.
  • Thomas Robert MalthusThomas Robert Malthus was born on the 13th or the 14th of February 1766 at The Rookery, a small elegant mansion near Dorking in Surrey.
  • George SteevensGeorge Steevens entered the world at Poplar on the 10th of May 1736. His father served as a captain and later became a director of the East India Company.
  • Edward Burnett TylorEdward Burnett Tylor left school at age 16 with no degree, the son of a brass factory owner, raised in the Quaker faith, and seemingly headed for a life of…
  • Thomas TelfordThomas Telford was born on the 9th of August 1757 on a hill farm called Glendinning, three miles east of Eskdalemuir Kirk in the rural parish of Westerkirk…
  • Pasquale PaoliPasquale Paoli was born on the 6th of April 1725 in the hamlet of Stretta, a village in the commune of Morosaglia in the mountains of Corsica.
  • Joseph WhitworthJohn Street in Stockport, Cheshire, marked the birthplace of Joseph Whitworth on the 21st of December 1803. The site now holds a blue plaque on the back wall…
  • Stuart J. RussellStuart Jonathan Russell entered the world in 1962 within the coastal city of Portsmouth, England. He attended St Paul's School in London before moving to…