Scientists in society: The Royal Society of South Africa

Jane Carruthers FRSSAf

Department of History, University of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, Unisa, 0003 South Africa e-mail carruej@unisa.ac.za

The full account of how the Royal Society of South Africa acquired its Charter and Statutes in 1908 is given here for the first time. The article explains the socio-political context in which the Society was founded in 1908 and analyses the legacies of other learned societies in southern Africa particularly the South African Philosophical Society which was established in 1877 that preceded it. The relationship between the Royal Society of South Africa, the Royal Society of London and similar societies is briefly examined. As the premier South African multidisciplinary scientific society during the twentieth century, the Royal Society of South Africa has contributed to the intellectual vibrancy of the country as well as to its national research output, and the institutional transformations and challenges relating to the Society over the past one hundred years are explored.1 sive and skillfully edited collection of essays, A History of Scientific Endeavour in South Africa a remarkable testament to the growth of science in South Africa arranged by disciplines with a chapter entitled A history of the Royal Society of South Africa.4 Moreover, the Transactions detail the annual reports of the Society so that the achievements of Fellows and Members as well as the specific highlights for the Society are made known each year. While scientific practitioners themselves have recorded the pasts of their disciplines and their professional organisations5 and some of them are included in this present issue of the Transactions historians have been slower in their task of explaining and interpreting the role of science in South African politics and society. At first this may seem somewhat surprising given the importance of knowledge and technology in a modern nation-state. But the apparent neglect of the history and philosophy of science in a colonial setting is not peculiar to South Africa. As far as Australia is concerned, it has been noted that until recently the history of Australian science has been considered to be innocuous, somewhat derivative and consequently uninteresting to historians.6 To some extent this view that the history of science is of antiquarian interest alone applies also to South Africa, where, in addition, the racially and culturally divided history of the subcontinent has attracted maximum attention from the small community of local academic historians as has the urgency to uncover the countrys hidden histories and the voice of the communities and people from below. Thus social history in a radical tradition as well as political and economic developments have been prioritised, while the intellectual history of South Africa until recently, the domain of the white elite has been somewhat overlooked, apart, of course, from the analysis of the ideologies of segregation and apartheid.7 There are signs that this may be changing with a burst of interest in the cultural history of science internationally, consequent on the growing recognition of science as a cultural agency, producing sometimes not accommodation, but dissent; not sweetness and light, but controversy; and not harmony but competition.8 This has local effects in South Africa as the current historiographical schools shift according to new ideological paradigms. Saul Dubow, a prominent historian of southern Africa based at the University of Sussex, has

INTRODUCTION The Royal Society of South Africa has deep roots in South African scientific endeavour and its long history has been inextricably bound up with the prevailing socio-politics of the country. Since the Societys birth, which in some respects can be traced to Cape Town in the 1820s, there have been complex processes of re-establishment and reorganisation, changes in name, direction, structures, focus, strategy and disciplinary relationships. Its role in South Africa has been periodically reconceptualised, leading to new interactions with government and civil society that have generated significant milestones worthy of commemoration. One of the most important of these was in 1977 when the Society observed the centenary of the founding of the South African Philosophical Society in 1877, a direct antecedent of the Royal Society of South Africa. But it is 2008 that marks one hundred years since a Royal Charter was awarded and we thus celebrate a long period of uninterrupted existence of the Society in its modern form and under its present name and structures. As has been said of the Royal Society of London, any institution which is successful takes on a life of its own, and the Royal Society is no exception. Its corporate presence is in itself a phenomenon of interest not only to its component individuals officers, Fellows, staff but to the literate public. But its mere existence as a selfperpetuating society is not its main raison dtre; were it so its history would not be of interest except to its members What was of importance, was, and is, the purpose for which it was founded2 The year 2008 is an appropriate point at which to re-examine the history and purposes of the Royal Society of South Africa in some detail, to identify the critical primary sources relating to it and to develop the background and the intellectual and socio-political environments in which it evolved. The Royal Society of South Africa has been relatively well served with narratives of its past but no extended orthodox history has emerged to compare with the number of publications about the Royal Society of London. In 1934 mathematician Lawrence Crawford wrote on The South African Literary and Scientific Institution, 18321857 (of which more below) in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa3 and in 1977 A.V. Hall, an eminent ecologist, concluded A.C. Browns exten-

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recently written A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 18202000, and if this magisterial book is indicative of the fresh approach, then there are real historical treats in store. All too often it is assumed that science has a life of its own, that it exists independently from and operates neutrally in the surrounding socio-political and economic matrix. Quite the opposite is true: the pursuit of knowledge is firmly embedded in society and can only be practised within its context and constraints. Scientific endeavour relates to the concerns of society at a particular place and time, and may seek to remedy, explain or elucidate some of them. Knowledge, whether its acquisition, dissemination or organisation, takes many forms and because it is part of the public domain, it has to speak to the political, social and economic constituencies in which it finds itself. Moreover, there is a strong link between knowledge and power and for this reason it is critical to understand the institutionalisation of science, as well as its relationship with the state. In addition, science that problematical English word is neither self-referencing nor static and perceptions and practice of science and scientific enterprise change over time. As history and sociology of technology specialist, Ian Inkster explains (quoting Barry Barnes, the sociologist of science), ideas are tools with which social groups may seek to achieve their purposes in particular situations, while science has functions in the social system and social uses for individuals in it. For instance, scientists need to consider their individual career interests and to network with others who may have different agendas. They also have to fund training and research, and to garner patronage from government, business and even a wider audience.9 In Social Change and Scientific Organisation: The Royal Institution, 17991844, Washington historian Morris Berman insists that intellectual life is not a given, being mediated by vested interests, elites and financial support, among other factors.10 Thus while some of the discourse emanating from the early Royal Society of South Africa seems to speak to modern concerns, one needs to be aware that the motives and actions [of the people involved] were necessarily not modern ones; viewed through modern eyes it is difficult to be sure of understanding them.11 Moreover, people often presume that to record science is to record progress and thus uncritically to laud individual contributors to a discipline. But one should be alert to narratives that manipulate the subject to stress the progressive role of certain ideals that are important in the present.12 To consider any change teleologically, as inevitably leading to progress, is ahistorical and distorting. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions physicist-philosopher Thomas Kuhn was adamant that any science had to be evaluated within its own time and context it was this perspective that created history that could offer more than a repository for anecdote or chronology and produce a decisive transformation in the image of science.13 Others too have argued against the use of hindsight as an explanatory tool and for the need to display the historical integrity of that science in its own time,14 as well as to appreciate that disciplinary histories are narratives replete with hints, suggestions and possibilities.15 As Longmore summarises, Science and scientists, despite the cloak of objectivity are as much beneficiary and victim of prevailing cultural expressions as everyone else.16 In the international historiography there is also considerable debate over the relationship and interaction between scientific endeavour in the metropole (Europe) and the periphery (colonial situations) and to what extent the one informed and/or influenced the other. George Basalla, the University of Dela-

wares thoughtful historian of science, famously argued that international science advanced in stages. In the first phase, people from Europe visited, collected and took specimens back to Europe from other parts of the globe, this being merely an extension of the imperial process of exploration that involved collection and classification. The next phase was colonial science in which colonial scientists entered the picture and began to play a subservient role. Finally, the colony slowly develops a scientific tradition of its own.17 Basallas typology has been criticised for minimising the interaction between colonial and imperial sciences and for gathering a variety of colonial scientists into a single category. Scientific endeavour takes different forms in different regions and countries and it is as well to recall in respect of the Royal Society of South Africa that one of the most central and provocative contributions made in recent years by the sociology of scientific knowledge is the simple recognition that all science is local.18 Moreover, we need to bear in mind the caution of the renowned historian of the British Empire, John MacKenzie, not to consider science too narrowly, because it can refer to any knowledge or organised common sense which, in the case of colonists, is generally self-taught, amateur and related to issues of development and modernisation.19 The meaning of science itself is slippery and Charles Babbages comment that there is no English term by which the occupation of a man of science could be expressed20 still holds true today. Moreover, science itself is not an absolute, and if all science [is] knowledge, not all knowledge [is] science.21 As will become clear, the Royal Society of South Africa is constantly being redefined by the science it promotes and by the socio-political context within which it operates. It goes without saying that the most eminent scientists working in South Africa have been Fellows and Members of the Royal Society of South Africa and this article will not rehearse all their names. Nor will it endeavour to prove the particular contributions these people have made to their disciplines. Many intellectually gifted men and women use their talents in furthering their research agendas and these may (and often do) lead to significant work, important discoveries and creative insights in various research areas. It has indeed been fortunate that so many people associated with the Royal Society of South Africa have enhanced the national scientific record in these ways. Evaluating these contributions is best left to their peers. However, it has been the Royal Society of South Africa that has provided an institutional structure in which scientists in many fields have been able to generate and share their knowledge, to promote scientific excellence and education, to provide a research arena and ambience and, moreover, to perpetuate an institution of which South Africa can be justly proud. It has provided a unique institution in which experts in particular disciplines may engage with the general context of scientific evolution in the country. It is the principal aim of this article to provide an overview of the Royal Society of South Africa from 1908 to the present, delineating the different names and histories of its antecedents before that date. The centenary year is an appropriate point at which to re-examine the birth of the Royal Society of South Africa in some detail and to identify and interpret the critical primary sources relating to it. It will be shown that the Society has proved to be adaptable and pragmatic, without ever compromising its objective of including the highest quality scientists and furthering and disseminating their research output. The Society has combined the characteristics of prestige, individual merit and excellence. Peers have provided camaraderie and critique. This article will explain and expose the origins of the Royal Society of South Africa and develop some

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of the layers regarding the background and the intellectual and socio-political environments in which it evolved. It will also raise but not necessarily answer questions around the nature and function of science in society and the Royal Societys role in furthering the intellectual vibrancy of South African life. This is an analysis that is not easy to summarise or simplify because of the rich primary sources that exist, and the many initiatives facilitated by the Royal Society of South Africa that have led to the emergence of South Africa as the knowledge power base on the African continent. At times the narrative lacks tight coherence and there are gaps but, as Leigh Bregman has observed in his doctoral thesis on the early learned societies at the Cape, there is no reason to suppose that the history of the institutionalisation of science has to be coherent.22 What follows is a number of sections that provide the historical environment for the evolution of the Royal Society of South Africa, its relationship with the Royal Society of London, the background of other Royal Societies within the British Empire and Commonwealth, that examine the acquisition of the 1908 Charter, and explore some of the areas in which the Society, as a Fellowship, has worked towards a common pursuit of rewarding and encouraging excellence and in promoting, fostering and sharing original research. THE ROYAL CHARTER AND FIRST COUNCIL MEETING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH AFRICA On 25 January 1908 King Edward VII, Queen Victorias eldest son who had been crowned in 1902, just months after the end of the South African Anglo-Boer War, being desirous of encouraging a design so laudable and of promoting the improvement and diffusion of Science in all its branches, signed a Charter (see Figure A in online supplement) establishing the Royal Society of South Africa with its headquarters in Cape Town in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope.23 Three months later, on Monday 27 April 1908, the first Council of the Royal Society of South Africa held its inaugural meeting. This was the culmination of a process initiated some years earlier by the South African Philosophical Society which expressed its desire to obtain a Royal Charter with the object of increasing its general usefulness and standard as a Society for the publication of original scientific work.24 Attaining this goal had been long and contentious and it had involved all four South African colonies at a time when their union into a single country was being mooted. Seven men comprised the inaugural Council and their tasks that late April day were to elect office-bearers, to decide on the procedure for selecting Fellows, and to consider the continuation of the Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society under the name of the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. It would be difficult to imagine a gathering of more eminent South Africans and their names read like a whos who of science in early twentieth-century South Africa. Their disciplines varied, but not unusually for their time although most had no professional training in their subjects of study, each man had already made a substantial contribution to knowledge in and about South Africa. All were dedicated to the dissemination of that knowledge through intellectual exchange, education and publication. The oldest of the group was Harry Bolus, born in Nottingham in 1834. He had immigrated to the Eastern Cape in 1850 and had lived in Cape Town since 1874. Bolus was an extremely successful businessman but his amateur passion was botany, a subject he had enthusiastically pursued from the 1860s. In 1908, he had a well established herbarium, many publications to his name and he was probably the most knowledgeable botanist in southern Africa. Another was a Frenchman, Louis Pringuey

(born 1855) who had arrived in the Cape in 1879 as a French teacher. His real interests, however, lay in entomology, archaeology and rock art and he soon abandoned language for them. In 1906, so great was his stature that he had become Director of the South African Museum. Then there were four Scotsmen, John (Jock) Carruthers Beattie, George Corstophine, John D.F. Gilchrist and Robert Broom, also all remarkable men. Carruthers Beattie (18661946) was a physicist and mathematician, who had obtained his D.Sc. at the University of Edinburgh and had worked with Lord Kelvin. He travelled throughout Africa on a survey of the magnetism of the continent and maintained an extraordinarily active research life. He was appointed to the staff of the South African College in 1897 and he campaigned, ultimately successfully, for South Africa to have its own universities rather than remaining subservient to the examining body of the University of the Cape of Good Hope (later the University of South Africa). He was the first Principal of the University of Cape Town and was knighted in 1920. John Gilchrist was born in 1866 and was a zoologist and marine biologist trained at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh. In 1896 Gilchrist was appointed to the post of government marine biologist and in this capacity and as Professor of Zoology at the South African College he was responsible for the discipline of ichthyology in South Africa as a new field of research. He surveyed the Cape and Natal coastlines and amassed a significant collection of freshwater fishes. Like the others on the Council, Gilchrist too was a prolific writer with many books and scholarly articles to his name. Also born in 1866, the same year as Beattie and Gilchrist, was Robert Broom, medical doctor and ardent palaeontologist. Trained at the University of Glasgow, Broom had experience of the United States and Australia before immigrating to South Africa in 1897. Inspired by Sir Richard Owen and fascinated by mammal evolution, Broom used his free time from his various medical practices in the Karoo to study its local fossils and was soon the expert. Between 1903 and 1909 he held the chair of Zoology and Geology at Victoria College in Stellenbosch and went on to make a distinguished contribution to palaeoanthropology in southern Africa. The last in the Scottish group was George Corstophine, born in 1868. He had studied biology and geology at Edinburgh but had obtained his Ph.D. in Munich. In 1895 he was appointed to the chair of Geology and Mineralogy at the South African College and became the Director of the Geological Survey with a special interest in diamonds. He too, published widely and was responsible for the first South African geological textbook. The person who became the first President of the Royal Society of South Africa (he held that position until 1912) was English-born and Cambridge-educated Sydney S. Hough, the seventh person at the meeting. Unlike the others, Hough does not have an entry in the Dictionary of South African Biography, but he was the only Council member who was a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Hough was an astronomer, who, in 1907 had succeeded Sir David Gill as His Majestys Astronomer at the Cape, having been Gills assistant since 1897. Hough was an authority on celestial dynamics and was a brilliant mathematician with a special interest in the theory of tides. His period in charge of the Observatory which lasted until 1923 was not one of change, but of solid achievement.25 This was the team that led the Royal Society of South Africa in its formative years and that, together with the Fellows and Members, ensured that 1908 became an important landmark. Since that time, the Society has maintained its intellectual integrity, independence, and interdisciplinarity. Without discrimination, it has fostered a national culture of science

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Figure 1. Sydney S. Hough F.R.S. (18701923) was the first President of the Royal Society of South Africa. Together with Gill and Hele-Shaw, Hough was one of the committee of three Fellows of the Royal Society resident in South Africa who established the organisational structure of the Royal Society of South Africa. In 1907, Hough had succeeded David Gill as His Majestys Astronomer at the Cape, having been Gills assistant since 1897. Hough was an outstanding mathematician and authority on celestial dynamics, with a special interest in the theory of tides. (Photograph Maciej Soltynski, courtesy of the South African Astronomical Observatory.)

excellence through funding, education and public outreach. It has rewarded eminent scientists with Fellowships and medals and facilitated a spirit of camaraderie among academics who are generous with their knowledge. It has encouraged specialists to recognise excellence in fields other than their own. The impressive Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa has appeared regularly, brimful of significant original research. The journal has attracted a substantial international as well as local readership. In addition, the Society has amassed an important and accessible library. In short, it has generally been the public face of South African science. THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON There are frequent questions about the relationship between the Royal Society of South Africa and the Royal Society of London. In 1977 the President of the Royal Society of South

Africa A.W. Sloan, a physiologist at the University of Cape Town, referred to their link as being that of parent body and offspring,26 but despite their sharing a name, the South African Society is not formally connected to its more famous namesake. Nonetheless, it is heir to many of its traditions and an outline of the history of the Royal Society will place the South African Royal Society in perspective. In addition, a brief review of the Royal Society of London may explain why the appellation Royal came to be sought after, why the support of the highest authority in the land was needed to further intellectual pursuits and how it came to be that the name Royal Society signifies the premier and most prestigious scientific society in any country, region or city. Moreover, the Royal Society of South Africa shares some characteristics with its noble counterpart. For example, it is entirely independent of government, responsible for its own rules and exercising total freedom of thought, expression and research direction. Its intent is similar, as are its organisational and administrative structures. Both the Statutes and the Obligation that Fellows sign on their induction are almost identical, and the Fellowship and Membership still consists broadly of divers worthy persons, inquisitive into natural philosophy27 who promote inductive knowledge.28 Moreover, unlike many of the great European scientific societies, it has evolved according to prevailing circumstances rather than having any grand plan imposed upon it. And finally, just as the Royal Society of London has adapted to alterations in the political and social environment, so too has the Royal Society of South Africa. The Royal Society of London emanated from the ferment of the Enlightenment period of the 1660s in Britain. During the Civil Wars of the 1640s and the Commonwealth period thereafter, a group of learned men met weekly, or as often as was possible in those troubled times, in Gresham College in London, in order to discuss their shared intellectual interests. The group was discontinued in 1658 but began afresh in 1660 during the Restoration era as the Society of Philosophers concentrating on what was referred to as the new or experimental philosophy. The idea of a college for the promoting of PhysicoMathematical Experimental Learning had apparently been generated by the well travelled Sir Robert Moray who had encountered such organisations in Europe. Moray, who was close to Charles II, negotiated the Kings support so that the enterprise would be a corporation with certain privileges including legal status, the right to accept donations and to allocate funds.29 Thus the Royal Charter (the first dated 15 July 1662, the second 22 April 1663) was crucial in providing protection, patronage and respectability under the new government. The King approved a coat-of-arms with the motto Nullius in Verba [On the words of no-one, i.e., Take no ones word for it] and gave the Society a bejewelled mace and property in London where meetings could be held. The Kings association with the Society also ensured that noblemen would show their loyalty to the crown by providing finance to this newly established Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge in return for Fellowships. (The word natural was inserted to emphasise the distinction between natural and supernatural knowledge.) A mere five years later the first history of the Royal Society appeared. Written by Dr Thomas Sprat (16351713), an early member of the Society and later Bishop of Rochester, it was more of a defence of the new philosophy against Aristotelian ideas and a justification of experimental learning than what we would term a history of the society.30 The dedication in the book praised the Kings support to increase the powers of all mankind, and to free them from the bondage of errors, a glory far greater than imperial

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conquest and one that would ensure that your Majesty will certainly obtain immortal fame, for having establishd a perpetual succession of inventors.31 Once recognised, the Society had to generate interest, prove its worth and develop its prestige. It did so by producing its Philosophical Transactions, by becoming involved in publishing scientific treatises and books, by starting a museum and library, and by arranging gatherings at which lectures were presented and experiments conducted. Britain was, of course, not alone in the surge of the new science during the Enlightenment. Around the same time, scientific societies sprung up elsewhere in Europe the Acadmie des Sciences founded by Louis XIV in 1666 and the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1700 are examples but they were governed under different principles from those of the Royal Society of London. They gave equal attention to literature as well as to other forms of knowledge, whereas the Royal Society focussed specifically on the natural sciences. Today one can appreciate that the latter focus included what would be called the applied as well as the pure sciences, in that during the time of Francis Bacon, for example, the problems that the Society confronted and wished to solve were generated by mining and navigation among other emerging technologies. The Royal Society of London had a most promising start: royal patronage, committed Fellows, premier and often charismatic scientific leadership (including Isaac Newton) and energetic administration and management. But despite this promise, money was generally short and numbers soon fell off. In 1676, the Society was the butt of Thomas Shadwells satirical play The Virtuoso. Even the Kings interest waned. Fellows had to be encouraged to attend meetings, John Evelyn for instance, exhorting his friend Samuel Pepys at one time President of the Society and a bountiful benefactor 32 to be present more regularly.33 By the 1700s the Society had gained stature but petty politics bedevilled its progress and the major difficulty that only one-third of the Fellows were scientific men by whatever definition seemed irresolvable. True scientific practitioners were diluted by the dominance of dilettante Fellows with the consequence that the Society was in danger of becoming yet another gentlemans club rather than a specialist body of knowledgeable equals.34 Until the mid-nineteenth century, with very few exceptions, scientific pursuits were restricted to the aristocratic and leisured classes but consequent on the Industrial Revolution, developments in technology and social organisation were set to change this. A new category of professional scientist emerged, and this at a time when the Royal Society of London suffered from inertia in its management ranks and a lacklustre public image. Sir Joseph Banks was born to a wealthy, landowning family and became a renowned botanist, scholar and disseminator of science, but he was a poor administrator and he was president of the Royal Society for more than forty years far too long in the opinion of many members. In Reflections on the Decline of Science in England and on Some of its Causes (1830), Charles Babbage described the misgovernment of the Royal Society and complained that management by an apathetic coterie, the indiscriminate admission of every candidate and the loss of focus were jeopardising the prestige, efficacy and, indeed, the very survival, of the Society.35 His views were echoed by Sir David Brewster who accused the Royal Society of dereliction of duty, writing to Babbage, It is a disgrace to men of science, and to the Royal Society, the natural guardian of English science, that they have not combined in a vigorous attempt to raise public feeling on the subject [of the decline of science in England].36

In fact, the new scientists of that period were imbued with different societal values from the landed aristocracy. Nineteenth-century political reform, by way of increasing democracy (the revolutions in Europe, the Reform Acts in Britain), gave voice to a fresh generation of intellectuals. In short, they were cast in a different mould from the founders of the Royal Society in the 1660s. More specialised disciplines came to prominence, and these spawned a number of other illustrious scientific societies in Britain the Linnaean Society (1788), the Royal Institution (1800), the Geological Society (1807), the Astronomical Society (1820) and the Geographical Society (1830, Royal after 1859) among them. All these societies had a growing and committed membership. This traumatic period for the Royal Society came to a head in 1831 when the British Association for the Advancement of Science was created and when the Astronomical Society was given its Royal status. These two in particular seemed to threaten the stature of the Royal Society, but it met the challenge by welcoming them into the scientific arena rather than resisting (as Banks had generally done) or competing with them. Indeed, the Society came to appreciate that the contributions made by the Fellows of specialised societies have greatly promoted the advance of science and have raised its standing.37 Even at that time some Royal Society Fellows were promoters and members of these newcomers and thus contributed to their success. More significantly, however, the Royal Society initiated extensive reforms after Bankss death to the extent that one might consider it to have been reconstituted. While Bankss presidency had been conservative and resistant to change, those who followed him began to think of the Society more flexibly in terms of a living institution ready to seize upon any opportunity of improving Natural Knowledge and of promoting the advance of technical industry by every aid that science could give.38 The internal power struggle over the role of the Royal Society in the world of learning took some time to come to a conclusion and many Fellows railed against changes.39 But the Statutes were revised (1847) and the decision was taken to withhold Fellowship from all but the prominent scientists of the highest calibre, despite the loss of income and smaller membership that this would entail. In the event, the Society played to its strengths, and it is these to which the Royal Society of South Africa is heir. While the British Association for the Advancement of Science adopted an evangelical role and worked under government sponsorship and support (as did the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, founded in 1905), the Royal Society emphasised its independence, its dedication to the pursuit of knowledge through maintaining standards of excellence in its Fellowship, its strong interdisciplinary nature and its individual character as an Invisible College40 and national academy. In short, it was the centre and focus of science in Britain that places science in Britain on view.41 The challenge to the Royal Society of London from specialist societies has been mentioned above, but there was another nineteenth-century test and this was to have a greater impact on the genesis of learned societies in South Africa. As Richard Drayton expresses it, the tide was going out on the English ancien rgime42 and technological changes were transforming agriculture and industry. The power of the landed gentry was waning and specific social groups, particularly those in the provincial cities which were most affected by industry, began to employ knowledge and learning as a means of generating upward mobility. Science and technology aided the strength of a growing, self-aware middle class and the emergence of a recognisably modern capitalist order. A large number of

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learned societies began at this time, attracting extremely clever people who did not have the benefit of noble patronage or gentle birth. Science was widening its appeal and societies sprang up in Edinburgh, Bristol, Manchester and Newcastle among other regional cities. And it is, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, to Newcastle that we must turn to explain the origins of the Royal Society of South Africa. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN LITERARY SOCIETY At the end of the eighteenth century, Newcastle was a provincial town with a population of about 30 000 but growing fast, located as it was on the great coalfields of Britain and beginning to host the heavy industries on which the prosperity of the Empire would later depend. There was a tradition of debating clubs and William Turner, the Unitarian Minister of the church in Hanover Square, led his fellow members in such a club to convert it into a more formal local society for reading papers and discussing scientific subjects. Thus was the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne founded on 7 February 1793. Early lectures tended towards the industrial and technical, the Society began a library, a regular colloquium was held and lectures were organised. The last were arranged by Thomas Bigge, High Sheriff of Northumberland and Vice-President of the Society in 1802.43 The Literary and Philosophical Society was the first of a number of similar groupings that flourished in Newcastle with considerable community support, others being the Mechanics Institute and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The thrust of the work written on the Society by Newcastle upon Tyne historian Derek Orange relates to infighting and local politics, but it also highlights the role of provincial societies such as this in mobilising the middle class. Participation in science provided legitimate platforms from which to confront the landed gentry in government in the struggle over political reform, and also to encourage a new economic paradigm based on urban industrial capitalism and technological prowess, rather than land ownership and high birth.44 Bregman describes science as the chosen form of cultural expression for this emerging bourgeoisie45 and it was this radicalism that was to impact on Cape society in the 1820s. Some of the intellectual circumstances in Newcastle in the late 1700s and early 1800s were replicated at the Cape of Good Hope in the early 1800s. The colonisation of South Africa began in the mid-1600s when the Dutch East India Company (VOC), a trading enterprise, established a revictualling station at the Cape of Good Hope to service vessels bound to and from the spice islands of the Far East. Basing its economic policy on mercantilism, monopoly and direct returns, the VOC envisaged an outpost contained in area and small in population. Before long, however, owing to a combination of environmental and economic factors, the settlement had spread away from the Cape peninsula into the interior. By the end of the eighteenth century whites had settled sparsely but permanently in much of todays Eastern Cape and Northern Cape provinces. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and with the bankruptcy of the VOC in 1795 the Cape came into British hands because of its strategic importance. After reverting to rule by the Netherlands (the Batavian Republic) between 1802 and 1806, the Cape was confirmed as a British possession in 1806, but the colony was only permanently ceded to Britain by the London Convention of 1814. In that year, 1814, the arch-Tory, Lord Charles Somerset, son of the Duke of Beaufort, was chosen by the Colonial Office in

London to be the Cape Colonys Governor with instructions to make no changes.46 His term of office lasted until his recall in 1826. When Somerset arrived the prevailing social and material culture was Dutch, there was an extremely small English-speaking population in Cape Town and there was no group that might be considered an intelligentsia. As Dubow describes, there was not even a school, a bookshop or a newspaper.47 The Enlightenment had gone almost unnoticed at the Cape which was economically more undeveloped, politically more inexperienced, and culturally more backward than any of the greater colonies of settlement.48 This situation altered after the 1820s with the immigration of a substantial number of British settlers, many of whom came imbued with radical ideas about the correct relationship between rulers and ruled and were determined to champion their democratic cause. As Bregman explains in his useful and detailed overview of the early scientific and literary societies at the Cape, the ideas that the 1820 Settlers brought with them were incompatible with the existing Cape-Dutch order and one of them, John Fairbairn, led an assault on the colonys political authorities.49 To this end he campaigned for a free press, a liberal administration and representative government. He and his allies, including Thomas Pringle and George Greig, were often in open conflict with the autocratic and conservative Governor, whose reactionary political vision was directly opposed to their democratic aspirations. But Somersets regime was supported by the British government of the time and also by the Dutch population at the Cape who were anxious to continue with old ways.50 Together with Dubow, Bregman argues that the institutionalisation of science at the Cape was driven by this contest between the emerging middle classes and the official elite but they show how it was also affected by the developments in British science that have been outlined above. John Fairbairn, the major opponent of Somerset, hailed from Newcastle upon Tyne, and prior to his immigration to South Africa in 1823 he had been a member of Turner s Literary and Philosophical Society.51 He was therefore well aware of the power of such radical organisations in pressurising for political reforms and he employed the same technique at the Cape,52 outlining what he wanted to do in terms of following the example of the Royal Society of London and the Asiatic Society in Calcutta.53 In 1824 Fairbairn established the South African Literary Society which was modelled on the upwardly mobile, utilitarian and dissenting traditions of the Newcastle Lit. and Phil. It was concerned more with improving the political and cultural standing of its members, and changing the balance of social relations, than it was devoted to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.54 This the first scientific society on the subcontinent was a direct challenge to Somersets authority, couched in the discourse of the advance of natural science. Fairbairn in fact advocated that scientific progress was incompatible with despotism.55 The South African Literary Society demonstrated embryonic civil society in action at the Cape, but it was soon quashed by Somerset in terms of a Proclamation dated 1800 that forbade such associations on the grounds that they might be rebellious Jacobin cells. Eleven men attended the first meeting, held on 22 July 1824, and of those eleven, Somerset would have recognised at least eight of his political foes. By 25 September just two months later and despite moderating its language, the Society, like the controversial newspaper the South African Commercial Advertiser, was no more.56 But pressure on Somerset and his reactionary colonial supporters was being applied from Britain as well as from local liberal groups and in 1823, as part of Lord Liverpools reforming strategies for colonial economic

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and political coherence, a Commission of Enquiry went to the Cape to investigate Somersets administration. As it happened, one of the Commissioners, John Thomas Bigge who had participated in a similar enquiry in New South Wales came from Newcastle where, as mentioned above, Thomas Bigge, his father, was involved in Turners Literary and Philosophical Society.57 Bigge may even have been known to Fairbairn and he certainly supported the reformers viewpoint. Somerset was doomed by the Commissions report as was the continuation of the Dutch way of life, because it recommended modernising the political and judicial institutions and ending patronage and corrupt practices. It encouraged capitalism, countenanced the possible emancipation of slaves and freedom for apprenticed Khoekhoen, and advocated an aggressive policy of Anglicisation.58 Perhaps emboldened by the appearance of the Commissioners report, the reformers tried to found another association, to be called the South African Literary and Philosophical Society, on 22 July 1825. This time the petition was signed by eight prominent men in Cape Town, the first signatory being the Reverend Fearon Fallows, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, who had arrived as His Majestys Astronomer at the Cape in 1821 in order to found the Observatory. (Neither Fairbairn or Pringle signed.) Fallows, a contemporary of Sir John Herschel at Cambridge, an ordained minister and teacher, was supported by, among others, Dr Andrew Smith. This carefully and respectfully worded petition is located in the Cape Archives and there is no response on file, but it seems that despite his support of the Observatory (completed 1828), a museum (1825) and a library (1818), Somerset was suspicious about the political intentions of the petitioners and their Society. Distrustful that their scientific motives cloaked a political agenda he refused them permission to start it.59 By the end of the 1820s with the recall of Somerset under a change of government in Britain and his replacement as Cape Governor by Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole in September 1829, the time was more propitious for the establishment of learned societies. Indeed, it was a period of major social and political realignment of cultural vibrancy and civic assertion at the Cape.60 Moreover, freedom of the press had been achieved in 1829 and the colony had survived the economic depression of the mid-1820s. Cole stimulated the economy, cautiously championed slave emancipation, and tried to resolve the challenges on the Capes Eastern Frontier. In Cape Town by 1830, although not all thriving equally, a library, a museum, botanical gardens and an observatory had been established, as had a protouniversity the South African College. More importantly, Cape middle-class society had been augmented by a number of men who were for different reasons keen to make their intellectual mark on colonial affairs. Perhaps the most notable of these was Andrew Smith, an ambitious army surgeon and an energetic polymath, determined to use his time at the Cape building up his scientific reputation and advancing his career in the echelons of the colonial service. A friend of Charles Darwin,61 Smith played a leading role in promoting natural history and other sciences during his sojourn at the Cape (he left in 1837) and led two important expeditions into the interior that contributed to further colonial expansion. Bregman records that Smith was involved in four of the eleven scientific societies in Cape Town between 1824 and 1833.62 It was in these changed circumstances that two new and more successful learned societies were established in Cape Town in 1829. The first was another South African Literary Society, mooted on 17 January 1829 and officially sanctioned in late May 1829, although Governor Cole was never its Patron.

Fairbairn referred to this as the re-establishment of the first South African Literary Society (founded 1824 and differently titled from the proposed South African Literary and Philosophical Society of 1825),63 but according to Bregman it was an entirely new body with very few of the original members. The second society was the South African Institution, which held its first meeting in April 1829 and announced its formation in the press on 10 June 1829. The Governor consented to be its Patron.64 It is perhaps noteworthy that Cape Town at this time could support two such associations (in addition to a South African Medical Society founded in 1827 and an Agricultural Society in 183165) and the reason for this is that they had different aims and different memberships. The members of the South African Literary Society Fairbairn was joint chairman were teachers at the South African College, colonial officials and professional people such as lawyers and civilian medical doctors.66 It was representative of middle class Cape Town society and, Dubow asserts, among the total of 104 members, there was a majority of Dutch-speakers.67 By then, as was noted by a German visitor to the Cape, younger Dutch Capetonians approached the English national character more and more it became the rage to copy everything English and to adopt the manner of life of their fellow-citizens.68 By contrast, the South African Institution comprised mainly the military hierarchy at the Cape and most members were drawn from government or quasi-government circles.69 The two associations had different agendas. Bregman states that the second South African Literary Society with its Anglo-Dutch middle class support had a strongly utilitarian programme for colonial improvement and was an organisation for the diffusion of useful knowledge.70 On the other hand, the South African Institution with its official and army elite members played down the utilitarian agenda in favour of wider intellectual interests and actively courted international recognition. Its mission was to promote general information and encourage Researches into the Natural History and Resources of Southern Africa.71 As well as providing an outlet for research, the South African Institution mobilised support for and the dissemination of research,72 publishing the South African Quarterly Journal in 1830 and sporadically thereafter until 1837. Dubow considers this journal to have been principally a platform for Smiths personal research interests, but it nonetheless prioritised scientific subjects related to southern Africa.73 It seemed that the Cape was well served by appropriate institutions promoting the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, but the critical mass and expertise was extremely small. By 1832 a tactical decision was taken by the South African Literary Society and the South African Institution to merge their membership and activities. Thus, instead of both folding, a new society, the South African Literary and Scientific Institution came into existence in July 1832.74 LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETIES OF THE EMPIRE Despite the specific influences on the development of intellectual life in the Cape Colony that have been outlined above, the southern African colonial setting was not singular in producing associations of the ilk of the South African Literary and Scientific Institution. Growing out of many of the similar impulses in other colonies, there was a proliferation of literary and philosophical societies elsewhere in the British world. In the Australian colonies of the nineteenth century aspiring bourgeoisie settlers who were interested in knowing more about their adopted new lands and in maintaining or generating some of the intellectual institutions of Britain, formed asso-

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ciations similar to those at the Cape. Not surprisingly, New South Wales was the first. In Sydney a Philosophical Society of Australasia was founded in 1821, and after a period of inactivity it was resuscitated as the Australian Philosophical Society in 1850. Between 1856 and 1866 it was called the Philosophical Society of New South Wales and in that latter year was sanctioned by her Majesty as the Royal Society of New South Wales. After 1862 it published its Transactions.75 South Australia followed suit when, in 1853, a group of leading Adelaide gentlemen formed the Adelaide Philosophical Society. The Code of Laws declared its object to be the discussion of all subjects connected with science, literature and art. Most papers, however, were scientific, practical and industrial. In 1859 the South Australian Institute came into being, and the title Royal Society of South Australia was used in 1880 after receiving permission to do so. Thereafter, the Society increasingly abandoned its literary and fine art bases to concentrate on the scientific.76 The Victoria Institute for the Advancement of Science began in Melbourne in 1854 and the Philosophical Society of Victoria in 1855. In 1859 they amalgamated to become the Royal Society of Victoria. That same year the Queensland Philosophical Society began and it became the Royal Society of Queensland in 1884. The state of Western Australia did not have a Royal Society until 1949; it had eventually grown out of the amateur natural history societies that had been spawned in the 1890s and early 1900s.77 The New Zealand Institute began in 1867 and became the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1933, its object (1997) being the advancement and promotion of science and technology in New Zealand.78 Canadas Royal Societys formation was different again, in that its constituent colonies did not have societies of their own and the Royal Society of Canada was deliberately started in order to nurture a national spirit in Canada and promote cooperation between English- and French-speakers. In 1867 the Canadian colonies federated into a single country and in 1882, coaxed by the Governor-General, the Marquess of Lorne (afterwards the Duke of Argyll), the Royal Society of Canada took shape with an equal emphasis on the English and French settler traditions in the country. Lorne supported the project because of the possibilities of the usefulness of such an organisation to a young country like Canada, and not least because of the fact that it might help to check the tendency of a pioneer community to put an overwhelming emphasis upon material things. The idea was to complete national collections of archives, paintings, natural history and the like and to be the catalyst for other learned societies that would all tackle the new problems that were peculiar to Canada. Part of this Royal Societys mission was to minimise the isolation of people working in such a large country with a sparse white population.79 The Royal Asiatic Society was somewhat different in purpose. It was founded in 1823 and obtained a Royal Charter in 1824. With headquarters in the United Kingdom and branches in the Far East, its mission was principally cultural as well as literary and scientific. Bregman shows how the South African Institution in the 1830s tried to establish links with some of these organisations, in particular the Natural History Society of Mauritius, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Literary and Agricultural Society of Ceylon.80 There is thus a large international network of Royal Societies, each sharing certain characteristics with the others, but each firmly embedded into the time and locality of their founding. One common feature is the link between science and national development, and the growing sense of independence of the periphery from the metropole in terms of access to, and the

processing of, knowledge. Another shared feature is their connection to the rise of the middle class, providing a voice for civil society and encouraging local self-confidence in various colonial settings and a sense of problem-solving in the real colonial world. Notwithstanding this pride in the local, all these societies gained status and affirmation of leadership by obtaining Royal Charters that signified their equality to similar institutions in imperial Britain of far longer standing. 18301877: THE SOUTH AFRICAN LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION AND THE CAPE MONTHLY MAGAZINE By 1830, learned societies, often styling themselves Philosophical, fitted into the framework of intellectual institutions in Cape Town and elsewhere in the British world, thus changing the social and scholarly dynamics of the colonies. They provided outlets for specialist and general interests and generally supported a journal. As far as Cape Town is concerned, as outlined previously, a museum, botanical gardens, observatory, library, and reputable college had been founded. Moreover, impetus had been given to exploring the interior under Andrew Smith in order to find out more about the natural environment and its precolonial people as well as to look for mercantile opportunities.81 But in contrast to Smiths search for local knowledge, it was around the Observatory, completed in 1828, that scientific thought in the Cape was energised and drew closer to British science that of the metropole and Empire. The short sojourn in Cape Town of Sir John Herschel between 1834 and 1838 breathed fresh life into local intellectual circles. Originally from Hanover, John Herschels father, Sir William, had set up a new life in England. There he became one of the leading astronomers of the age. His son John followed in his footsteps, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of London at the age of 21, chairman of the Astronomical Society in 1827, and obtained a knighthood in 1831. In the 1820s John Herschel had been one of the leading reformers of the Royal Society of London, believing that the aristocracy of wealth and power should be replaced by the prouder aristocracy of science,82 but his bid to become President of that Society in 1830 had been unsuccessful. Herschel was thus intimately acquainted with the politics of British science and he brought to the Cape a perspective that combined social with scientific reform and a strong sense of justice. Herschel was not formally attached to the Observatory but he worked closely with Royal Astronomer Thomas Maclear who had arrived in Cape Town at the same time. Herschels home became a beacon for the intelligentsia of the Cape and in 1834, the very year of his arrival, he was elected President of the South African Literary and Scientific Institution. Under its auspices he initiated or supported a number of scientific projects at the Cape, generally avoiding the conservative elite set surrounding Government House. He thus collaborated with Fairbairn and other like-minded people to found a statefunded educational system at the Cape. Moreover, he held liberal views regarding slave emancipation and he abhorred the violence against the Xhosa on the Capes Eastern Frontier.83 There is a gap in the records of the South African Literary and Scientific Institution around the time that Herschel left the Cape. Although its name remained in the Cape Almanac until 1857, Bregman could find no record of its meetings or mention of its activities in the press.84 The March 1860 issue of The Cape Monthly Magazine described The South African Institution: Its fruits in past years in an article written by the Reverend James Adamson, one of the few people to have been a member of both the second South African Literary Society and the South

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African Institution between 1829 and 1832 when the merger occurred.85 A Scot born in 1797, Adamson was a Presbyterian minister who had immigrated to the Cape in 1827 to establish St Andrews, the first Presbyterian church in South Africa. Adamson was a man of wide interests and he was one of the founders of the South African College in 1829. There he lectured on mathematics, physics, classics and English, although his overly long and difficult lectures apparently chased many students away, to the extent that the institution languished and had to be revitalised by Dr (later Sir) Langham Dale. Adamsons entry in the Dictionary of South African Biography lauds him for his involvement in the botanical garden, his textbooks, his work with freed slaves and his extraordinarily extensive knowledge. In his Cape Monthly Magazine article, Adamson itemised the successes of the South African Institution in terms of meteorology, support for exploration, publication of the South African Quarterly Journal, the botanical garden, museum and library, and he advocated renewing, at an early opportunity, the being and efforts of our Literary and Scientific Institution. We will receive, without doubt, every encouragement in such an undertaking, from society here, with its present views and spirit: and experience has made it obvious that the highest authorities in the land are prepared to give any such proposal a most cordial welcome.86 This suggests that the Institution had died completely and Adamson must have been disappointed that his exhortation to re-establish it at this time came to nought. In fact, between 1857 and 1877 the mantle of intellectual activity moved away from any learned society to The Cape Monthly Magazine. This was issued in three series, the first from January 1857 until June 1863 (edited by Alfred Cole and Roderick Noble), the second from July 1870 until June 1879 (until 1875 edited by Roderick Noble and after his death that year by his brother John) and the third from July 1879 until June 1881 (edited by John Noble). When the first issue appeared on 1 January 1857 it was announced as essentially a Miscellany, combining amusement with information, and affording equal space to literature, science, the fine arts, and commercial and statistical intelligence.87 The point was made that our colonial literature is in embryo, our science in its infancy, and our art requires nourishing and cherishing to keep it alive.88 True to its vision of rectifying this situation, The Cape Monthly Magazine carried a wide variety of topics, generally but not always on colonial themes. Agricultural subjects were covered, as were items on botany, zoology, geology, literature, travel, African history, linguistics and ethnography, Cape history, education and colonial development. The activities of the Horticultural Society, Albany Natural History Society and the South African Museum and Library were regular topics. The Cape Monthly Magazine began enthusiastically and perhaps it was the catalyst for Governor Sir George Greys request in 1861 to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to approach the President of the Royal Society of London and ask for a full set of the Transactions from 1848 to be sent to the Cape and kept up to date from then onwards.89 In March 1860 The Cape Monthly Magazine contained an article on The study of science, lauding the highest human endeavour as the attainment of truth but lamenting the fact that so many scientists neglected beauty in their attention merely to the real that is, to fact. Nonetheless, scientists were praised as those men whose patient labour and deep research are the wonder of mankind. Confining themselves to the accumulation of details, allowing no deduction until the truth is self-evident, they reject all assistance from imagination regarding speculation as vain Such are the men, who treat-

ing of such dry subjects as botany, anatomy, &c, content themselves with the dry narration of facts.90 The article is not signed but it is clear that the author (probably the editor) was not, himself, a dry scientist of this kind. Increasingly, The Cape Monthly Magazine prioritised the literary to the extent of stating this mission firmly on its cover and, by 1870, declaring outright that the editors task is to develop literary tastes and faculties that from want of opportunity too often lie dormant.91 To this end, the South African Fine Arts Association was founded in 1871, thus side-lining science in the Magazine, although Sir Joseph Hookers Presidential Address to the Royal Society of London was fully reported in 1876.92 By that time, however, it appears that the dry scientists at the Cape were missing both the camaraderie of a society of their own and a publication that would be an outlet for their work. It was obvious that The Cape Monthly Magazine no longer met their needs and at a meeting, held at the South African Museum on 31 May, a steering committee was nominated, and Resolution and Rules drafted to form a South African Philosophical Society. This committee met on 22 June 1877 and South African College Professor of English and Classics (and founder and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Cape of Good Hope) Dr Langham Dale was called to the chair, on a motion proposed by bibliophile and culturally inclined lawyer Charles Fairbridge, and seconded by civil servant and amateur lepidopterist Roland Trimen (elected FRS in 1883). The group then considered the draft resolution and rules and refined the language as follows. Resolution Number 1 was expressed as: That it is desirable to form a Society for Promoting Original Research in South Africa, and Recording its Results. The Reverend D. Smith, seconded by Thomas Fuller (later Sir Thomas, editor of the Cape Argus and prominent local politician), moved an amendment suggesting a change after the word for to the Promotion of Literary and Scientific Inquiry and Discussion, as well as Original Research, and another amendment was suggested by Thomas Upington (lawyer and politician, later Sir Thomas and Prime Minister of the Cape, 18841886), and a Mr Young that the Society be formed for Promoting Scientific Inquiry and Original Research in South Africa and Recording its Results.93 The last amendment was accepted and in this manner the charge of this Philosophical Society was manifestly scientific, prioritising original research. Having tentatively finalised the objectives, there were four further meetings, 27 and 29 June and 2 and 16 July 1877 respectively, at which the Rules were revised and adopted for the Society. Item 2 read Its object shall be to promote Original Research and record its results, especially as concerned with the Natural History, Physical Condition, History, Geography, Statistics, Industrial Resources, Languages and Traditions of South Africa.94 A general meeting that attracted thirty-nine people was held on 23 July 1877 when the first Council was elected. In a move to obtain official support, the Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir Bartle Frere, was made President, and among the best known names on the Council with him were Vice-President Langham Dale, Harry Bolus, Roland Trimen and John X. Merriman, later to be Prime Minister of the Cape.95 In a brief history of the Society that was published in 1951, archaeologist A.J.H. Goodwin stressed the continuity between the new society and the scientifically-inclined contributors and readers of The Cape Monthly Magazine, emphasising that academic qualification was not a prerequisite for membership. The year after the Societys foundation, the first Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society was published, and within two years the Society had become divided into sections of

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specialist interest, for example Ethnology, Zoology, Botany and the like, while the physical sciences were apparently tacitly accepted as the main business of the Society.96 There was no category of Fellow in the Society; there were only Members and Corresponding Members, the latter for people who were not resident in Cape Town. This suggests that the Society intended its influence to be felt more widely in southern Africa than merely in the Cape Colony. 18771908: THE SOUTH AFRICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY When the South African Philosophical Society was established in 1877 the political environment was quite different from that at the time of the South African Literary Society of 1824 or the merged South African Literary and Scientific Institute of 1832. Having survived a separatist movement that gathered momentum in the 1840s and early 1850s that would have divided the Western from the Eastern Cape, the Cape Colony was granted Representative Government in 1853 and subsequently Responsible Government in 1872 under Prime Minister J.C. Molteno. By the 1870s the Cape Colony had expanded its formal boundary up to the Orange River and was actively and incrementally annexing the Xhosa lands of the Eastern Cape by military conquest. The Cape border thus crept towards that of the colony of Natal, an area that had been wrested from the Boers and annexed to Britain in 1842. To the north, the Transvaal had been given its independence by the Sand River Convention of 1852, while Sir Harry Smiths Orange River Sovereignty had become the republic of the Orange Free State in 1854. The slowly evolving political stability of the two British colonies and the two Boer republics was disturbed by the discovery of diamonds in the Kimberley area (hurriedly annexed to the Cape with some adroit boundary alterations) as was the lifestyle of all the African communities in the subcontinent whose labour was increasingly required for the mines. British interest in and commitment to the region in the nineteenth century waxed and waned depending on the policy of the government in power and the relative state of the British exchequer, but the mineral revolution seemed to demand a new political dispensation for the subcontinent and a reconfiguration of its geography at a time of growing British imperialism. Lord Carnarvon, the British Colonial Secretary at the time, was dedicated to confederating the four white states in southern Africa (and including what is now Namibia and Botswana) and, having piloted the South Africa Bill through the British Parliament, to this purpose he arranged a conference on the matter but without success. A new Governor, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, formerly Governor of Bombay, was sent to the Cape in 1877 with instructions to handle confederation through diplomatic channels, his probable reward being the Governor-Generalship of the enlarged colony. The negotiations did not, however, get off the ground because just two weeks after Freres arrival, Natals Sir Theophilus Shepstone annexed the Transvaal. This unilateral and high-handed action was controversial, alienating the Boer states and the powerful Dutchspeaking sector in the Cape Colony. It was eventually to lead to the Transvaal War of 18801881 when, after losing the battle of Majuba, Britain returned independent status to the Transvaal. At the same time, the tense situation in the subcontinent was exacerbated by war and violence against Africans in the Eastern Cape, in Griqualand West and East, in Zululand (the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879) and in the Pedi areas of the Transvaal. The South African Philosophical Society was formed in this

political turmoil and became caught up in debates about how the confederation should best come about under the aegis of Britain or from a local initiative. Terminology with respect to South Africa was becoming an issue. The first meeting of the Society in 1877 had been convened at University Hall in Orange Street. This was the site of the University of the Cape of Good Hope, an examining body that had been created in 1873 and that had received its Royal Charter in 1877 thus increasing the standing of the new institution in the British academic world.97 Sir Bartle Frere was Chancellor of this University in 1880, but even before his assumption of this office, indeed from the outset, the university had set its sights on becoming the university of a confederated subcontinent. In 1877 there had even been a suggestion that its name should be the University of South Africa, which eventually happened, but very much later.98 The term South Africa thus had quite a different connotation in the 1870s referring, as it did, to a potential country, as compared with the 1820s and 1830s when it was merely a hazy geographical description for an area stretching to the Zambezi River with Cape Town as the only colonial urban centre. In fact, there was no state named South Africa until 1910 when the Union of South Africa was created, but rather a miscellany of settler and African polities, often at war with each other. As Dubow emphasises, although the name South Africa was invoked, it had no constitutional meaning and the make-up and boundaries of these states and societies were often vague.99 In these circumstances electing the enthusiastic confederationist Sir Bartle Frere as the President of the South African Philosophical Society was something of a political statement and his inaugural presidential address confirms this. It is worth mentioning that in 1878, just the following year, Frere was to dismiss the liberal John X. Merriman, his fellow Philosophical Society councillor, together with Premier J.C. Molteno and most of his cabinet, in a contest between colonial and imperial nationalism and ideas around confederation. It is not clear whether Frere had scrutinised the objects of the new Society of which he was the head, for although a newly elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, in his presidential address in Cape Town he did not tackle what would today be thought of as a conventional scientific issue. Instead he spoke about the Native Races of South Africa, admonishing his listeners to consider the question that they would be asked as South Africans: What has South Africa done with her native races? Freres vision was that they would be subdued and converted to habits of useful labour and civilisation [contributing] to vast and growing empires.100 In the event, Freres greatest legacy to South Africa was indeed in this vein having outmanoeuvred Cetshwayo and started the war that vanquished the Zulu kingdom but he never achieved anything like a confederation of southern African states. Dubow has characterised this address in the following terms: science was too important an activity to be left to scientists alone; likewise, the domain of native policy was too vital to the future of South Africa and the Empire at large to be left to the discretion of politicians and parties. Thus, while gracing the new Philosophical Society and its scholarly objectives with his gubernatorial patronage, Frere signalled firmly his intention to use scientific knowledge in pursuit of broader imperial ends while reminding his colonial subjects of their subordinate status.101 It would appear that Frere made no further speeches to the South African Philosophical Society and in 1879 he became Vice-President, succeeded as President by Sir David Gill, the Astronomer Royal, who had arrived from Aberdeen that very

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year. Members of the South African Philosophical Society were not unaware of Freres political machinations, and on Freres departure from the colony in 1883, John G. Gamble, the climatologist and meteorologist who was then President, thanked Governor Frere for his contributions to the Society with the remark, we may have disagreed with him politically, but in this arena political questions have no place.102 Meetings were generally well attended and the Transactions appeared regularly. Minutes record regular donations of books to build up the Societys library. The Society even extended its activities to encompass, for example, becoming involved in the 1892 Kimberley South African and International Exhibition,103 and initiating special projects such as working on a system of metrication for the four South African colonies.104 By the end of the century there was a considerable number of associations in southern Africa that went by the name of literary or philosophical or scientific. In 1855 the Literary, Scientific and Medical Society was started in Grahamstown, the Eastern Province Literary and Scientific Society in 1883, the Worcester Literary and Scientific Society in ca.1870, the Bloemfontein Literary and Scientific Society in 1877, the Transvaal Literary and Scientific Society in 1874, the Transvaal Philosophical Society for the Advancement of Science, Art and Literature in 1898 and the Barberton Scientific and Literary Society in 1888.105 Some of the Proceedings of this last-named Society indicate the wide range of subjects on which papers were delivered to the Barberton community (Percy Fitzpatrick was a member), focusing on mining issues (geology, electricity, amalgams) but a W. Culver also spoke about orchids, a Dr Mitchell on the etiology and prophylaxis of malaria (an issue that involved the Royal Society of London in Africa in 1898) and Ernest Galpin one of South Africas foremost botanists on the fertilisation of plants.106 Another significant category of societies founded in the second half of the nineteenth century were the natural history societies they were established in Port Elizabeth, East London, Grahamstown (Albany), Durban and King Williams Town among others.107 These societies, following on a British tradition, were never as strong or popular in South Africa as they were in Australia, for example, where the Englishspeaking population was more homogeneous and membership thus larger.108 The Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society, the Cape Societys formal record, make for extremely interesting reading, both for their broad disciplinary reach and the wide range of subject matter. Scanning the index and contents of the Transactions provides ample evidence of how the Society vitalised intellectual debate and original research within the circle of membership. The record is one of innovative engagement with the knowledge industry of the day and shows an impressive array of subjects; many of them, such as an overland African telegraph and the collection of geographical data, related to colonial development. But papers were presented and published on tourmaline crystals, entomology, the acclimatisation of trout and many more on botany and astronomy.109 A noteworthy early contribution was an ecological paper, On the peculiar colours of animals in relation to habits of life, by Mary Barber, a Corresponding Member in Kimberley (and the only woman in the Society), in which she expressed her admiration of Charles Darwin who put us on the right track and who, she said, enabled us to spell out the book of nature with Mr Darwins alphabet in our hands.110 Given the objectives of the Society to advance science by jettisoning history and literature with The Cape Monthly Magazine, it is also noteworthy that before the age of scientific specialisation so many papers appeared on what we could today refer to as the human and

social sciences. One example is that of historian member George M. Theal who urged the importance of examining the documents in the Cape Archives. A further point of interest is the reporting of relevant research from the Royal Society of New South Wales111and the Royal Society of Victoria.112 The Societys first specialist section was the Ethnological division, instituted because of the need to preserve San paintings and other hunter-gatherer remains. All scientific disciplines were represented in the Society, among them astronomy, archaeology, botany, meteorology and climatology, mineralogy and petrology, physics and engineering, geology and palaeontology, irrigation, mathematics, oceanography, physiology and zoology. During the life of the South African Philosophical Society its Presidents dealt with issues relating to the African people of southern Africa (Frere), physics (Carruthers Beattie), astronomy (W.F. Finlay and Gill), botany (P. MacOwan and R. Marloth), entomology (Pringuey and Trimen), meteorology (Gamble) and marine zoology (Gilchrist), in their annual addresses. There can be no doubt of the growing maturity of South African science in all its aspects through the existence and efforts of the South African Philosophical Society and it had an effect on the growing body of scientists of every discipline in the subcontinent. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH AFRICA, 1903 TO 1908 The South African Philosophical Society began well but, like so many other institutions including, as mentioned above even the august Royal Society of London the initial enthusiasm wore off and it began to suffer from the ennui of members. The correspondence of Sir David Gill, the Astronomer Royal in South Africa from 1879 to 1906 and a leading figure in the Society, is preserved in the archives of the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town.113 The letters there record a large number of times when speakers were difficult to procure, articles for the Transactions were not forthcoming and finding someone prepared to stand as President was a problem. On 2 September 1891, for example, Thomas Guthrie (Professor of Mathematics at the South African College and collaborator with Harry Bolus on revising the genus Erica), who had not been consulted on whether he would be prepared to be President of the Society, wrote rather sarcastically to Louis Pringuey, Do not for a moment suppose that I suspect either yourself or any of my friends capable of intentionally thrusting the Presidentship of the S.A.P.S. on me on account of its critical condition.114 In the event, Pringuey became President, and in his 1891 address he articulated high hopes for the Society, believing that it had the potential to become a scientific Society which, without perhaps aspiring to equal or be considered on a par with the older societies of England and the Continent, will become a Chartered Society, certainly second to no other Colonial Societies, be they Indian, Canadian or Australian.115 As explained previously, the Royal Society of London had its genesis in a period of intellectual political and social turmoil in England and, indeed, a similar situation prevailed at the Cape when John Fairbairn, Andrew Smith, Fearon Fallows and others had pressured for the establishment of a Literary and Philosophical Society in the 1820s. Perhaps unsettled political conditions promote or encourage new forms of intellectual organisation because in the tumultuous aftermath of the South African Anglo-Boer War three national scientific institutions were created: the South African Association for the Advancement of Science (S2A3) in 1905, the Royal Society of South Africa in 1908 and the Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns in 1909.116 The precise catalyst for the conversion of the South African

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Figure 2. Evolution of the Royal Society of South Africa

Philosophical Society to the Royal Society of South Africa at that particular time is not known. One can safely surmise that from time to time the possibility of a Royal Society in South Africa was raised, especially when one considers the plethora of examples of other colonial Royal Societies that have been mentioned earlier. During the Presidency of Thomas Stewart (engineer of the Table Mountain reservoir and Johannesburg water supply) at an Ordinary Monthly Meeting of the South

African Philosophical Society on 29 September 1898 (16 members were present), Pringuey put forward a motion That the Council be instructed to take the steps necessary for the incorporation by Royal Charter of the Society under the name of Royal Society of South Africa but this was not accepted. Gills amendment won the day, That the question of incorporation of this Society by Royal Charter be referred to the Council for consideration and report.117 This was done and it was formally

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decided at a Council meeting on 15 August 1899 to apply for a Royal Charter under the name Royal Society of South Africa. The Secretary was asked to follow this up and ascertain what needed to be done in order to obtain a charter.118 The initiative was halted by the outbreak of the South African Anglo-Boer War in October 1899, and when conditions of peace and potential prosperity had returned to the subcontinent after 1902 the matter was taken up again. Another factor that without doubt influenced the decision to apply for a charter was the southern African visit of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) planned for 1905. There is no question but that the South African Philosophical Society would have been pleased to have been the Royal Society of South Africa at the time when the eminent British scientists arrived. According to Dubow, this visit was intended to confer status on the newly constituted South African Association for the Advancement of Science whose immediate history went back to a meeting held in Cape Town in July 1901 [i.e., before the end of the war] at which a proposal was made by Theodore Reunert to establish an annual congress of engineers.119 Reunert was a Transvaaler at that time, hailing from Leeds, where he had completed his mechanical engineering apprenticeship. He arrived in Johannesburg in 1888, just two years after the discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfields, and was the first person to write about the engineering challenges of diamond mining. He was a foundation member of the South African Association of Engineers (1898) and dedicated to establishing a library in Johannesburg as well as institutions for tertiary education. With his support as well as that of others, the S2A3 was formed along exactly the same lines as the BAAS, including both professional and amateur scientists, and it included people in all four colonies in the region, as well as in Rhodesia. Government support was forthcoming for this Association. The fledgling S2A3 was, apparently, concerned not to upset the premier scientific status and thus the superior position of the Philosophical Society.120 Many members of the Philosophical Society joined the S2A3. In 1903 Gilchrist was the Secretary of both the S2A3 and Philosophical Society and they were even holding joint meetings. Goodwin asserts that when the visit of the BAAS was in the air, it was necessary for it to cooperate with a local society called Advancement of Science. So this was created from the ranks of the Philosophical Society, although the new Association was to be wider in scope, including history, education, agriculture and animal husbandry and, of course, to have a membership outside of as well as within the Cape Colony.121 Gill had an absolutely pivotal role in establishing the S2A3, although he was initially concerned that it would be an engineering society and thus not attractive to other scientists.122 But apparently his fears were overcome and in his support of the S2A3 he emphasised the part that science could play in healing the rifts created by the war. He said: Science knows no nationality, and forms a meeting-ground on which men of every race are brethren, working together for a common end and that end is truth.123 The fact that the S2A3 had broad representation was a step towards dealing with entrenched regional rivalries as the subcontinent worked out its political transformation and it also served to encourage a national scientific identity rather than a colonial one.124 It was during the formation of the S2A3 that the South African Philosophical Society took the formal steps to apply for a Royal Charter. On 20 August 1903, Secretary Pringuey informed members of the Philosophical Society that at the Annual General Meeting to be held on 9 September After the election [of President and Council], the Council will submit for approval of the Members the draft of a proposed Royal Charter for the

Incorporation of the Society and an amended set of Bye-Laws, copies of which were attached to the notice.125 In the Cape Archives is a file which contains just two handwritten letters, both from Pringuey. The first is dated 19 October 1903, addressed to the Secretary of Gordon Sprigg, farmer, dam-builder turned politician who had been Prime Minister of the Cape Colony since 1900. There had been a meeting between Sprigg and the Philosophical Society at the end of 1902,126 and so Pringuey wrote as follows: You will probably remember that some time ago, a deputation from the Council of the South African Philosophical Society visited upon the Honourable the Premier to lay before him the desire of the Council to obtain a Royal Charter for the Incorporation of the Society and to ask him to use his influence and that of the Cape government in applying for and obtaining the said Charter under the name of the Royal Society of South Africa. Pringuey then referred to the Societys meeting on 9 September, at which a majority of members present had decided to respectfully request the grant of a Charter with the support of the Cape Government. The letter ended with the comment, I may add that the Council understands that Lord Milner [High Commissioner for South Africa and Governor of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony] approves of the Petition of Incorporation, but I would, of course, leave the matter entirely in your hands as to the best and most expeditious way of obtaining the same. On this letter is the Premier s Secretarys note dated 20 April 1904 that reads: We should approach the S of S [Secretary of State] through HE [His Excellency] the Gov[ernor, Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson]. It would be well to do so whilst Lord Milner is in England as he would, I know, give the proposal every support. The second letter in this file is dated more than four years later 21 January 1908. In it, Pringuey wrote again to the Secretary of the Cape Prime Minister, this time Leander Starr Jameson, to acknowledge receipt of the Charter.127 (see Figure B in online supplement) Other, fuller files in the Cape and Transvaal Archives and in the Archives of the Observatory in Cape Town fill in the complex story of those four years from late 1903 to early 1908 and detail the events leading from that first application to final receipt of the Charter. With South Africa then all under British control after the defeat of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, some kind of confederation under Britain was finally in sight, driven by the wealth of the newly acquired Transvaal goldfields. In this period of transition, governments rose and fell. By 1908 when the Charter was eventually received, the Cape had had a change of government with Jameson having replaced Sprigg and, in turn, in February that year, Freres old foe, John X. Merriman of the South African Party, had come in as the last premier of the Cape Colony. Britain too had a new government after 1905 under the Liberal Partys Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Both the Transvaal and Orange River colonies had been granted a measure of independence in 1908 and Boer parties, Het Volk and the Orangia Unie, were in power. The region was heading towards political unification although whether a federation or a union would be the outcome was still not clear. There was considerable tension between the imperial government and local colonies, added to which there was a rivalry for dominance in any new political dispensation, particularly between the Transvaal, where economic power and the economic future lay, and the Cape Colony, with its greater age and cultural primacy. Cape Town was a sophisticated city with a long history and well established intellectual institutions an art gallery, museum, parliament buildings, gardens, a university and the like.128 But the Transvaal, with its great wealth, was fast catching up

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and its growing middle and urban class in both Johannesburg and Pretoria had established a number of institutions both before and after the war. These included a university-type college, art gallery, museums and a number of specialist organisations such as the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and the Association of Engineers and Architects (1892); the Chemical and Metallurgical Society of South Africa (1894); the Geological Society of South Africa (1895); the South African Society of Electrical Engineers and the Transvaal Medical Society (1897).129 While circumstances were certainly not identical to those in Cape Town in the 1820s when the South African Literary Society was founded, one might suggest that a similar atmosphere of changing civil and official society prevailed in the first decade of the twentieth century. In these circumstances, in order to have stature and be truly representative of South Africa any institution that claimed the title Royal Society of South Africa could not be limited only to Cape Town but had to have the support of at least all four colonies. South Africa was now a potential country stretching as far as the Limpopo River (if not to the Zambezi) and not a term to be used lightly or loosely. What needed to be determined was whether the Cape or the Transvaal would be the dominant province. In the event, as Dubow reminds us, The decision to split the capital of South Africa between Cape Town and Pretoria signalled that only by acknowledging the existence of competition between north and south could such tensions be contained.130 But tension in the knowledge industry was exacerbated further between colonial (local) and metropolitan (imperial). By 1908 when the Charter of the Royal Society of South Africa was received, the visit of the BAAS had come and gone. A book entitled Science in South Africa: A Handbook and Review, edited by the Reverend William Flint (the Capes Librarian of Parliament) and John Gilchrist (described earlier as the Government Biologist and leading member of the South African Philosophical Society), had appeared for that visit in 1905. Gill wrote the Introduction, lamenting the passing of certain races of mankind, noting the burgeoning urbanisation, and emphasising that It is, however, in the cause of pure science that we look for the greatest impulse, sympathy and aid. Few countries owe more to science than South Africa. In this regard, Gill mentioned the challenges of deep level mining; agricultural scourges such as phylloxera, fruit-eating insects, fruit, animal diseases and the development of commercial fisheries. But in an imperfectly developed country the conditions of life must tend chiefly towards what men call practical ends. This does not mean that science is a non-practical thing. When the struggle of life is keen men do not stop to investigate scientific principles for themselves, and have only time to borrow the results of scientific discovery by others for their own immediate ends. This has certainly hitherto been the case in South Africa. We can point to but an honoured few who in the past have done good original scientific research. But with the recent importation of men of trained scientific capacity, as Professors in our colleges, or Government experts, and now with a few sons of the soil who have been trained by them, there is evidence of a marked increase in true scientific work, and a hopeful prospect of more.131 This was his imperial aspiration and his rationale for the existence of a Royal Society of South Africa. To return to the events leading up to the granting of a Royal Charter, just three days after Pringueys letter of 19 October 1903, Prime Minister Sprigg wrote to Sir Walter HelyHutchinson, the former Governor of Natal and Zululand (18931901), who had become governor of the Cape Colony in 1901. Spriggs Minute supported the application for a Charter, citing the valuable scientific work that the Philosophical

Society had done since its establishment. He expressed the hope that the Governor would lend his support to this initiative and endorse the recommendation, particularly in the knowledge that High Commissioner Milner was interested in the subject and was in England where he could personally testify to the worth of the Society, together with the renown of its President, His Majestys Astronomer, Sir David Gill his personal friend. Bolstering the claim further was Spriggs comment that The Society has members resident in all parts of South Africa, and although its Headquarters would be nominally Cape Town, it would propose to hold its meetings at the several great centres in South Africa, from year to year.132 By January 1904 Hely-Hutchinson had forwarded the application to Alfred Lyttelton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, whose response was that he could not consider the matter until he had the views of the other colonies the Transvaal, Natal and the Orange River Colony and he had thus passed it on to Milner for his opinion.133 Milner needed to know exactly what the South African Philosophical Society had in mind, so he asked for a formal petition from the Society outlining why it considered it deserved a Royal Charter and to provide some idea of the structure and administration it would have should it become the Royal Society of South Africa. The petition, dated 17 June 1904, stated That the Council and Members of the said Society, believing that the well-being and usefulness thereof would be most materially promoted by obtaining a Charter of Incorporation under the style of The Royal Society of South Africa, or such other name as your Majesty may be graciously pleased to direct. As far as transitional arrangements were concerned, the information was provided that Gilchrist (then President of the South African Philosophical Society) would be the first President of the Royal Society of South Africa, and he would hold office until the following Annual General Meeting when a new President would be elected. The current by-laws of the Society would remain in force until new ones were devised.134 In other words, it would be a simple conversion of the Philosophical Society to the Royal Society. The next day, a letter went out from the Prime Minister s office to HelyHutchinson enclosing this petition for Milner s attention and adding in order to allay his fears that Ministers desire to add, for the information of the High Commissioner, that it would appear that one-fifth of the Members of the Society reside in parts other than in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope; namely 13 in Natal, 20 in the Transvaal, 8 in Rhodesia, and 2 in the Orange River Colony. The total number is at present 215 members.135 Two days later the Despatch was sent to Lyttelton and also to Milner, the latter being asked for an expression of the opinion of the governments of the Transvaal, Orange River Colony, and Natal, as to the propriety of acceding to the prayer of the Petition.136 By July, Natal had signalled its support, and by August, Milner was happy to confirm that I may add that on behalf of the two new Colonies [i.e., the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony] I am likewise prepared to support the Petition.137 But Milner s support was premature and, after advertisements had been placed, objections were registered by a number of societies in the Transvaal who hurriedly sent a cablegram to the Privy Council the body tasked to consider the matter before giving it to the King for his approval on 22 November 1904. They were the Chemical Metallurgical and Mining Society of South Africa with 1130 members (W.A. Caldecott, President and G.A. Denny, Vice-President), the South African Association of Engineers with 210 members (Arthur Whittoms, President), the Mechanical Engineers Association of the

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Witwatersrand Incorporated with 327 members (Philip B. Osborn, Acting President), the Institute of Land Surveyors of the Transvaal Incorporated with 118 members (W.K. Tucker, President) and the Institute of Mine Surveyors with 112 members (Frederick Rowland, Secretary to Representatives).138 Their protest was not to be taken lightly as all of them were significant men on the Witwatersrand and their societies were well supported. In addition, some were better qualified in their professions than many members of the South African Philosophical Society who had certainly gained renown, but who were actually amateurs in terms of formal professional qualifications. Caldecott was a consulting metallurgist with experience at Barberton, Pilgrims Rest and Rhodesia. Denny, born in Australia, was also a metallurgist and mining engineer and he had travelled the goldfields of the world. He wrote many technical books and invented a process that produced higher yields on the mines. Osborn, a civil and mining engineer was the Transvaal governments Land Surveyor, Tucker was also a senior land surveyor, Rowland was a Chartered Secretary who ran many institutions (he was General Secretary of the S2A3) while William Cullen, who had trained at the Freiburg School of Mines, headed up the Nobel Dynamite Company before taking over at Modderfontein in 1902. He was one of the prime movers for the Union of South Africa and later a founder of the University of the Witwatersrand. In their letter to the Privy Council on behalf of their institutions (dated 3 December 1904) these men confirmed their 22 November cable, reiterating their request that the King refuse the request for a Charter and clearly identified their objections. First, they did not believe that the time was ripe for a Royal Society of South Africa because so many scientific societies had recently been founded whose respective scope and correlation have not yet been sufficiently determined. Second, while they would support, indeed encourage and be proud of, the South African Philosophical Society being titled The Royal Philosophical Society of South Africa or The Royal Society of the Cape Colony it was the conversion of the one to another called the Royal Society of South Africa that was the problem. Among further reservations were that the Society was not sufficiently representative in its sphere of action (its scope limited only to certain regions of scientific study) and also in its membership (overwhelmingly Cape-based). Moreover, the majority of its present members cannot be said to have won scientific fame even in South Africa and that when the Transactions were scrutinised carefully it was clear that the Society has not displayed the activity which might be justly expected from a Society claiming the high title and premier position for which it prays.139 Such comments would not have endeared the objectors to the leaders of the South African Philosophical Society.140 As well as protesters, however, there were supporters. On 23 November 1904, Reunert, President of the S2A3, submitted a resolution to the Privy Council which read: The Council of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science lends its cordial and unanimous support to the application of the South African Philosophical Society to be incorporated as the Royal Society of South Africa and he concluded with a statement that his Association, a body of over 1000 members from all the South African Colonies chiefly the Transvaal consider it its duty to submit this resolution to the Privy Council in view of certain objections which have been raised to the granting of this Charter, and in order that the view of the great majority of scientific men in the Colonies may be adequately represented.141 On the same day, Gill, always impatient with delay and red tape and perhaps an imperialist first and colonial second wrote to his close friend and fellow astronomer

Sir William Huggins, who was then President of the Royal Society of London. Gill was concerned that the Privy Council might consult the Royal Society on the matter and for Hugginss benefit, he dismissed the situation as follows: I am told that some Society calling itself the Chemists and Metallurgical Association has entered a protest. In reality I believe this is the work of one or two individuals with some jealousy or dislike to our Society. Our Society really has done most excellent work, especially in the fields of Botany and Entomology142 Milner, however, was adamant that the Transvaal challenge should not simply be over-ruled. Indeed, it seems that the High Commissioner had considerable sympathy with the Transvaal groups in opposing what seemed to be so blatant a takeover bid from a fellow Colony. Milner s Secretary wrote in the file that His Excellency actually agreed with the petitioners that any Royal Society of South Africa should include such bodies as the Transvaal Chemical and Mining Engineers probably the foremost in the world in its own line. I think His Excellency would sign a Despatch saying that the time is hardly ripe for a Charter until there has been further amalgamation locally, but it must be carefully worded, because he is, I think, Patron and President of the Philosophical Society.143 In an effort to resolve the situation diplomatically, Milner asked the Council of the Philosophical Society to meet with representatives of the protesting societies and discuss the matter amicably, and Gill did so when he was in Johannesburg in January 1905. Apparently Gill was able to persuade the group that the formation of a Royal Society of South Africa would be an appropriate move at that time, and this became the first Resolution of the meeting. But in the second Resolution the engineers and surveyors won a victory. This was an agreement that the South African Philosophical Society would withdraw its present petition and instead should draft a proposed constitution to be submitted to the Premier Scientific Societies of South Africa with a view to their concurrently petitioning for the creation of a Royal Society of South Africa. In other words, the initiative for a Royal Society of South Africa would be inclusive and collaborative. It turned out, however, that this was not feasible. As Gill told Milner, since that meeting he (Gill) had realised that an existing scientific body had to be the petitioning body and not an organisation that was still to come into existence. He explained that Royal Charters were only granted to Societies which had a history and some proof of the work they had done as reason for their incorporation. Bearing in mind the Royal Societies of other colonies or indeed, the history of the Royal Society of London itself as outlined above, and thus taking licence with historical facts, Gill asserted that the title Royal, has never been conferred on any Society but one that deals with pure science generally I say it, in no spirit of disparagement, that the protesting Societies are acting rather ultra vires. Strictly speaking they are not pure Scientific Societies they are in every case more correctly described as technical societies composed of men who apply the result of Scientific research by others to technical processes. The only two truly Scientific Societies in Johannesburg, viz. the Geological and the SAAAS have formally declined to protest. Gill suggested to Milner that if this advance is not met in a friendly and practical spirit, I think you may regard the protest as negligible Gill attached a document drawn up by the Council of the South African Philosophical Society that outlined the Societys history and the steps it had taken thus far to obtain a Charter. In it one can detect Gills views on the matter, for it expressly presents the motive for the Charter as the earnest desire to bring together all workers in pure science as distinguished from applied science and to centralise, if possi-

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ble, all their work in the publications of that Society, which could thus be kept to the same high standard of merit as that of similar Societies in Canada, Australia and India.144 In April, in order to apply more political pressure but from a different imperial quarter, renowned British zoologist Philip Sclater wrote to Lord Selborne (Milner s successor as High Commissioner for South Africa and Governor of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies in that month, April 1905). Milner was informed that Sclater s son, William, Director of the South African Museum since 1896 and an important South African ornithologist, had asked his father to forward some relevant information to the High Commissioner so as to ensure that the Charter application went ahead. The letter ended: I venture, however, to express a hope that when I see you next August at Johannesburg with the British Association I should find that you have been able to agree with the wishes of Sir David Gill and my son on the subject.145 It seems that many people wanted a Royal Society of South Africa to be in existence by the time of the visit of the BAAS. But it was not to be, and the Transvaal group insisted on more detail as to what exactly the Royal Society would represent. Later that year, 1905, on 5 and 6 September and on 29 November, Gilchrist again met with the Transvaalers in order to bring the matter to finality. He explained the raison dtre of the proposed Royal Society of South Africa as follows to William Cullen, then President of the Chemical Metallurgical and Mining Society of South Africa and head of the Dynamite Factory at Modderfontein: I think anyone who is elected a fellow of the proposed Royal Society should have done some scientific work. If this is not laid down at the outset the value and standard of fellowship will be of a very low order scientifically.146 The matter dragged on into1906 but there had been some progress thanks to the efforts of Gill and Gilchrist and to the willingness of the Transvaal group to come around to the idea of founding a Royal Society provided that they had some say in it. It seems that the headquarters of the new Society might have been a sticking point, and in his summary of events leading up to the final petition for a Charter, Gills first draft (he scored out these paragraphs in the final version) explicitly referred to the question of rivalry (in science) between the Cape of Good Hope and the Transvaal and noted that the first petition had no clause referring to headquarters or meeting place. However, his draft continued, if the gravitation is to be towards Johannesburg, as some persons seem to expect then a majority vote could decide this. He added this omission in the terms of the petition was purposefully made.147 In the event, however, the decision was taken to have the Societys headquarters in Cape Town, the home of the South African Philosophical Society. In February 1906 the objectors wrote formally to the Privy Council withdrawing their objections because of the new, negotiated arrangements which had been mutually agreed, including presumably the issue of headquarters.148 The South African Philosophical Society would be the petitioning body but they shall, if successful in their petition, transfer the Charter to the Council of the proposed Royal Society of South Africa, this Council to be the Provisional Council constituted in accordance with sub-section (c). Presumably to placate the applied scientists who might not be elected to Fellowship and to allay fears that all members of the South African Philosophical Society would not automatically become Fellows of the Royal Society of South Africa (which had been proposed), there would be dual membership elected Fellows and voluntary Members. Initially, Fellows would be limited to forty, but the number would increase by five each year, until the ceiling of one hundred was reached. A Provisional Council would be set

Figure 3. Sir David Gill F.R.S. (18431914), together with Hough and Hele-Shaw, was one of the three Fellows of the Royal Society, London, who began the formal establishment of the Royal Society of South Africa. Gill, who had trained in Aberdeen, was appointed her Majestys Astronomer at the Cape in 1879. A dynamic and energetic man, he pioneered photographic methods of astronomy in South Africa and was a supporter of geodetic survey work. President of the South African Philosophical Society and highly esteemed internationally, Gill was a major force behind the establishment of both the Royal Society of South Africa and the South African Association for the Advancement of Science. Gill retired in 1906 for health reasons and returned to Britain in that year. (Photograph Maciej Soltynski, courtesy of the South African Astronomical Observatory, Cape Town.)

up and there was a compromise in this respect too. Rather than merely continuing the Council of the South African Philosophical Society, this would be disbanded and the three Fellows of the Royal Society of London resident in South Africa, viz. the two astronomers Sir David Gill and Sydney Hough, together with Henry Hele-Shaw (a remarkable inventor and researcher, who had held the positions of Professor of Engineering at Bristol and Liverpool and who, in 1904, had come to the Transvaal tasked by the imperial government with establishing engineering as an academic discipline in that colony), would each nominate three others to form the Council. The provisional Council was comprised of regional representatives as follows: Jock Carruthers Beattie, Harry Bolus, Robert Broom, W. Cullen, G.A. Denny, H. Hatch, John Gilchrist, Louis Pringuey and Arnold Theiler.149 Generally speaking, the constitution of the Royal Society of South Africa would be as far as possible on the lines of that of the Royal Society of London150 and not the by-laws of the South African Philosophical Society as had been the original intention. All seemed set for the matter to now go before the King, but the wheels of government turn slowly and Pringuey had to confirm all the arrangements, giving the previous history, in a letter to the Cape Premier in September 1906. Thereafter, the Prime Minister had formally to withdraw his request for a Charter and submit a fresh one.151 This was done on 4 October 1906.152 The next step was for the formalities to be sorted out between the Privy Council and the Secretary of State

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Figure 4. Henry Hele-Shaw F.R.S. (18541941) was one of the three Fellows of the Royal Society of London living in South Africa who established the Royal Society of South Africa. An engineer, he was founding Professor of Engineering at Bristol and at Liverpool. In 1904 he was invited to South Africa to establish engineering as an academic discipline at what was then the Transvaal Technical Institute (later the University of the Witwatersrand) of which he became the Principal. A research engineer with a talent for invention, he designed an integrating anemometer, investigated fluid dynamics and invented a friction clutch and an hydraulic transmission that was widely used in motor vehicles and ships. (Photograph courtesy of the Royal Society of London).

before presenting the matter to the King in Council for a decision. Not only was a new petition needed, but a draft Charter as well, one that reflected the negotiations with the Transvaal societies.153 On 5 December 1906, a petition went through from the Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society of South Africa enclosing an appropriately supportive document from themselves and the other kindred societies.154 By 4 February 1907 Pringuey was able to assure the Cape Prime Minister that all opposition to the granting of a Charter had been withdrawn, and he asked the Premier to notify the Privy Council accordingly and request a Charter anew along the lines of an enclosed draft. As the then President of the South African Philosophical Society, Carruthers Beattie signed the petition that began: That in accordance with an agreement between the South African Philosophical Society and other Scientific Societies in South Africa, the Draft of Statutes for the constitution of a new Society to be called, subject to Your Majestys pleasure, The Royal Society of South Africa, has been prepared.155 In April the documents went to the Secretary of State,156 and in July a reminder was sent, asking for a reply.157 By 23 November 1907 there was some news and of a typically bureaucratic kind. Six copies of the Order in Council had been drafted on 2 November 1907, but only when the fee of 95.2.0 had been paid would the Secretary of State cause the warrant to be prepared for His Majestys signature.158 No doubt quite desperate to finalise the matter, Pringuey wrote out a personal cheque for this very large sum of money and it

went off on 17 December 1907.159 At the end of January 1908 Lord Elgin, Secretary of State for the Colonies, sent the Charter to Hely-Hutchinson, asking the Governor to transmit it to the Society. Prime Minister Merriman acknowledged the Governors Minute of 18 February on 24 February with thanks, saying that the Charter had reached its proper destination and asking him to pass on his own and the Royal Society of South Africas grateful appreciation for the part that Lord Elgin has taken in regard to the granting of the Charter.160 The patience of the officials of the South African Philosophical Society had been sorely tried by the long and drawn-out Charter application. But in the longer term one can appreciate that the intervention of the Transvaal mining scientists and their contribution to shaping the Society at the outset ensured both the strength and acceptance of the young institution at a time of political transformation. It was, in fact, extremely productive in a number of ways. For example, it caused the emerging Royal Society of South Africa to define itself closely and to ensure that elitism for scientific reasons rather than mere privilege prevailed. It also encouraged debate and fresh thinking on the relationship between various sciences or bodies of knowledge pure versus applied and forced extremely intelligent men to articulate in precise terms what role a Royal Society of South Africa would play in the wider national development. The suggestion that the three aforementioned Fellows of the Royal Society of London then living in South Africa form the core of the new Royal Society of South Africa gave the latter a credibility and stronger scientific rationale than it would have had had the then current Council of the South African Philosophical Society merely taken over. The Statutes are very similar to those of the Royal Society of London rather than those of the obsolete South African Philosophical Society which would have otherwise been the case.161 The structure of Fellows and Members was considered with care, as were the details as to what specific contributions its Fellows, as eminent researchers and contributors to science, would be required to make. It also meant that Cape parochialism was avoided, or rather, that South African science was not merely an extension of the Cape colony as the oldest, largest, and most mature state in the region,162 and that the Society started life as regionally inclusive, although, in later times, this has occasionally been difficult to sustain. It also prevented the Society from reflecting only an imperialist ethos, which people like Gill, as admirers of Milner and with very strong British connections, might well have welcomed. As Dubow has pointed out, science provided an intellectual and practical bond between South Africans in different places, speaking different languages and from different disciplinary and professional backgrounds.163 Many Royal Societies elsewhere in the world are specific to an urban centre or province (e.g. the Royal Society of London, Edinburgh, South Australia etc.) rather than countrywide and this has been a challenge for the Royal Society of South Africa. Most importantly, the initiating debate between the colonies meant that there was no doubt of real meaning to the phrase Royal Society of South Africa and confirmed that the Society was the consequence of a transparent and collaborative process that did not alienate mining and industry the branches of science that were absent from the Cape Colony. Indeed, had the perspective of the Transvaal groups not been accepted, it is entirely possible that objections received after 1910, when the Union of South Africa had been created, might have been a death-knell for the Royal Society. The Statutes of the Royal Society of South Africa entrench the fact that the Society is fully South African, that the northern part of the country is repre-

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Figure 5. Swiss-born Dr (later Sir) Arnold Theiler (18671936) was one of the two first Vice-Presidents of the Royal Society of South Africa. He immigrated to the Transvaal Republic in 1891 and was responsible for the development of veterinary medicine and research into a number of significant animal diseases. Theiler founded the Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute and, after Union in 1910, joined the national Department of Agriculture as Director of Veterinary Research. The most famous veterinarian of his day, he was the recipient of numerous distinctions, prizes and honorary degrees. (Donaldson, K. (ed.), South African Whos Who 19171918. Cape Town and London, Ken Donaldson, 1918. p. 275.)

Figure 6. Thomas Muir (18441934) was one of the two first VicePresidents of the Royal Society of South Africa. A mathematician by training, in 1892 Muir was appointed Superintendent-General of Education in the Cape Colony and was responsible for numerous significant reforms in education. He was also Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Cape of Good Hope, President of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, and author of 307 scientific papers. He was knighted in 1915. This bronze bust of Muir, by W.G. Bevington from the Morris Singer Founders in London, is situated in the South African National Library. (Photograph Maciej Soltynski, courtesy of the South African National Library.)

sented and that the spectrum of membership is wide, providing niches for scientists at different levels Ordinary and Honorary Fellows as well as Members. With Hough as President Gill and Hele-Shaw had both left South Africa by then the first meeting of the Royal Society of South Africa took place on 6 April 1908, Pringuey being elected Secretary and Bolus, Treasurer. After further meetings on 27 and 30 April there were two Vice-Presidents, Dr (later Sir) Thomas Muir, mathematician and Superintendent-General of Education for the Cape Colony, and Dr (later Sir) Arnold Theiler, State Veterinarian for the Transvaal and founder of Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute, and the Council proceeded to consider the method of procedure to be adopted in the selection of the forty original Fellows of the Society164 Theiler s appointment is of particular interest because he was an official of the Transvaal government and his institution was to become an extremely important locus of scientific research in South Africa. Once the Royal Society of South Africa had been established it was set to make its unique contribution to South African intellectual life and to the support, promotion and development of South African science. As it happened, the timing of its foundation was fortunate, even propitious, because this was just as the Union of South Africa was coming into being and the Society could embed itself at once into the emerging South African society that followed. It was not the only time, however, that the Society would need to change direction, be flexible and adapt to different social and scientific conditions. In the years following upon Union, government entered the scientific and technological arenas with centralisation as a core strategy. Moreover, unlike the generalised pursuits of the members of the South African Philosophical Society, twentieth-century science (especially after the First World War) became increasingly

specialised. In this regard, the Royal Society of South Africa took on a new role, that of interdisciplinary communication. It became a meeting ground for Fellows and an arena in which very wide peer opinion might be obtained. In short, it was a national endeavour in the broadest sense, aspiring to be inclusive of all people, all scientific disciplines and all points of view. STATUTES AND ADMINISTRATION The original Statutes provided for a Council comprising a President, at least two Vice-Presidents (one resident in the Cape and one in the Transvaal), a General Secretary, Treasurer and seven other Fellows. Their roles, duties and responsibilities are detailed in the Statutes. Of Ordinary Fellows, there was at first a ceiling of forty, later expanded incrementally to one hundred, elected from those who have done work in furtherance of Science, and who are resident in South Africa. Details of the election procedure, meetings and the Obligation that Fellows sign also form part of the Statutes. The structure and administration of the Society have not remained the same in the century since it was founded. Like the Royal Society of London, it has been sufficiently flexible to adapt to new circumstances and to adjust its procedures and activities accordingly. Over the years changes have enabled the Society to grow in terms of electing more Fellows, to establish formal branches in other parts of the country Natal, the Transvaal and the Eastern Cape in particular. The fields of science within the Society have also transformed with time and in 1990 it was decided to recognise the Societys activities broadly in the following sections, Life, Physical, Mathematical, Earth, Chemical, Medical, Engineering and later Human Sciences.165 The statutes of the Society were revised in 1935, in 1982 in small respects and in 2006, but the broad provisions of the original charter and statements have stood the test of time.

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The Charter and Statutes have determined that the Headquarters of the Society shall be in Cape Town and the Society thus has a fixed home. A close association with the University of the Cape of Good Hope and the South African College during the life of the South African Philosophical Society created an informal link between the Society and the University of Cape Town and, in addition, many of the Fellows of the Society have been based there. For many decades Council meetings regularly took place at the Athenaeum in Newlands and since 1988, the University of Cape Town has provided office accommodation in the Lawrence Room in the P.D. Hahn Building, thus assisting the Society in its smooth administration. In 1967, for example, there was a large membership to service, some 200 Members and 95 Fellows, 31 per cent of whom were in Cape Town, 26 per cent in Durban and Pietermaritzburg and 24 per cent in Johannesburg and Pretoria.166 The rivalry between the provinces (then colonies) of South Africa that characterised the birth of the Royal Society of South Africa has never quite disappeared. Now that there are nine, rather than four provinces, the divisions are not as stark as they once were, but there is no doubt that having a Society with a very strong base in Cape Town has led to fears of marginalisation by Fellows and Members elsewhere in South Africa. For example, an early request (1913) from the Transvaal for possible grants-in-aid was greeted with a rather dismissive response that any suggestions from the members on the Rand would receive the consideration it [sic] deserved167 Later the problem was put more starkly by Frank Nabarro, the distinguished physicist at the University of the Witwatersrand, in a Society discussion document in 1987. He expressed the view that the Cape-based nature of the Society and the Cape focus of its activities had led to its being considered to be the natural history society of the University of Cape Town, an image that he argued needed to be shed and more national exposure and focus generated.168 This was partly addressed by the establishment of branches of the Society in other parts of South Africa but their trajectories have often seesawed depending on the enthusiasm and charisma of the local chair and committee. In 1962 a branch was started in Natal that galvanised the scientific community in that region with interesting lectures, outings and symposia. This was followed by the inauguration of an Eastern Cape Branch in 1970, a Cape Branch came into being to cater in 1974 for meetings of special Cape interest and in 1975 a Transvaal Branch was founded (now the Northern Branch). Branches hold meetings and outings, and promote projects of specific value to each region the Young Royals in the case of the Eastern Cape for example. In addition, the issue of the unusual two-tier division in a Royal Society between Fellows and Members (brought about by the need to include what was in 1908 a scientific community divided into pure and applied, and Rules now obsolete that decreed that Fellows would be chosen from Members) has been raised, but not changed.169 The Royal Society is comprised of individuals, not interest or lobby groups, and there is no requirement for any particular or predetermined distribution of branches of knowledge. It is consequently an unusual type of academy. Election to Fellowship has always been a singular honour as election is done by peers of other disciplines on the objective basis of contribution to science alone. A number of Fellows live outside South Africa. The Royal Society of South Africa also has Honorary Fellows, mostly Foreign and some but not all of whom were born or educated in South Africa. Such Foreign Honorary Fellows have to have close links with South African scientists and/or research projects. Among them at present in the United Kingdom are Sir

Aaron Klug (b. 1926), who won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and worked with Rosalind Franklin in John Bernals famous laboratory in the 1950s and Sir Arnold Wolfendale (b. 1927), the Astronomer Royal from 1991 to 1995. In Australia the Society is privileged to honour the nephrologist Priscilla Kincaid-Smith (b. 1926) who is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, in France, Yves Coppens (b. 1934) the French anthropologist and co-discoverer of Lucy and in the United States, Frederick Seitz (b. 1911), a physicist by training and President of the National Academy of Sciences (19621969) and President of Rockefeller University (19681978); Tim Clutton-Brock (b. 1946), a zoologist recently appointed first Prince Philip Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cambridge University in Honour of the Prince Consorts three decades as Chancellor and made famous by his research on meerkats in the Kalahari. There are many others and the Societys links with these eminent men and women strengthens institutional and disciplinary relationships world-wide. Rewards other than Fellowship have also been instituted in order to encourage both eminent and emerging scientists. Two medals are presented each year if there are deserving candidates. One is the Herschel Medal, that recognises outstanding scientific achievement in South Africa especially in multidisciplinary activities, and the other is the S. Meiring Naud Medal for excellence for a scientist under the age of 35. An Honours Certificate is also awarded from time to time, especially for service to the Society. In 1924 the presentation to Fellows of a permanent form of certificate170 was discussed, but whether these were issued thereafter is not clear. In 1970 the wording of a Fellowship Certificate was agreed, and it is akin to a graduation certificate for possible display.171 Presently, the Certificate is headed by the Societys coat-of-arms, but when the Royal Society of South Africa was founded in 1908 there was no visual symbol of the institution and no seal or coat-of-arms was registered in Britain with the Royal College of Heralds at that time.172 In the 1970s the Societys Council gave this symbolic question some attention, approaching the State Herald, Dr Cornelis Pama. There were some sensitive issues to be negotiated because if any devices appeared that were South African (in the sense of coming from the national coat-of-arms), then the State Presidents permission would be required and the Royal might be problematic because by then South Africa was a republic outside of the British Commonwealth. As the minutes express it: A special representation would have to be made [to the State President] on the title of the Society and its special implication, which indeed continues to be fully acceptable to its Fellows and Members.173 At a Council meeting in May 1972, a very colourful heraldic concept was tabled, consisting of a shield containing a Quarter of England, a protea, ostrich plumes, four red disas, blue crane supporters and the motto Res Parvae Crescent Concordia [By agreement small things grow].174 By 1975 this had fallen from favour and there was a new design comprising lions in the place of the blue cranes, a scroll and quill, and a crest of a rising fish eagle clutching a protea in its talons. The motto Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi [From Africa always something new] was put forward.175 The plan was that the design and registration procedure would be completed in time for the 1977 centenary. But there were many delays, and in June 1977 there was still no finality. Then another motto variation was suggested, In Experiendo Progressus [Progress through experimenting], and the scroll and quill were omitted as being too literary.176 By November 1977, a quadrant had replaced the scroll and quill, the protea had gone the way of the red disas and only the fish eagle remained, now with its wings drawn

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be at the cost of standards of dress which were in any case generally more casual than in the past.180 It is those standards of scientific integrity and vigour that have been the glue holding Fellows and Members of the Royal Society of South Africa together. THE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT When John Gamble, then President of the South African Philosophical Society, bade Governor Sir Bartle Frere farewell from the Cape in 1883 and thanked him for his work with the Society, he made the point that we may have disagreed with him politically, but in this arena political questions have no place.181 Unlike other societies in South Africa that have direct ties to government the Royal Society has been able to maintain its non-political stance and to conduct its scientific life outside of politics. There was, for example, no comment in the Societys affairs on various changes in political parties in power, not even after 1961 what the title Royal might imply in a republic without connections to any king or queen. But during the twentieth century science has been a matter for the state in a manner previously unknown. It is now regarded as part of governments brief to fund research, coordinate science and technology in specific ministerial portfolios and other centralised bureaucratic organs and to set and support priorities in a national scientific agenda. While the Royal Society has eschewed an active role in South African political affairs it has conformed to the political contours of the country and this has been the case after, as well as before, 1908. Fairbairns vision when trying to found the first scientific society in southern Africa, that it should be the voice of civil society in control of the knowledge arena rather than an arm of government, has not been lost sight of through the years. Houghs first Presidential Address to the Royal Society of South Africa, Some of the aims of astronomy of precision,182 was delivered on 20 April 1910, just a month before the Union of South Africa became a reality a unitary form of government with four provinces. It was a relatively quick development, as Davenport and Saunders observe, the federation of Canada took three years, that of Australia about ten, while the South African National Convention completed its work in less than a year.183 Thus within the first two years of the Societys existence a new country had emerged, driven by the desire of the four British colonies to form a nation by reconciling what were then called the two races, i.e., English and Dutch-speakers. In that process, as is well known, despite vehement protests and even a delegation to the British Parliament, black South Africans were deprived of their rights to the extent eventually of losing the few political privileges that they enjoyed in the Cape. Since 1908 the Society has survived three major upheavals in the constitution of the country, the first of which was Union in 1910, mentioned above. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the ties binding South Africa to the British Empire were progressively loosened, eventually leading to a republican constitution outside the British Commonwealth in 1961. Nearer our own time, in 1994 a non-racial, fully democratic constitution was accepted after extensive negotiations, and South Africa was readmitted to the Commonwealth. Although the Royal Society has never had racial or ethnic politics in its constitution, by the very nature of the broader society within which it has existed, it has not been until very recently that eminent scientists of colour have emerged to become distinguished Fellows. This is naturally a most welcome development and the Society encourages younger African scientists to support the objectives of science in South Africa in various ways. The commitment to scientific endeavour of the different

Figure 7. The coat-of-arms of the Royal Society of South Africa, adopted in 1978.

back.177 By February 1978 this was finally agreed, the final tricking the heraldically annotated but uncoloured draft paid for (R25) and sent to the State Herald for ratification, whose only amendment was that the crown have three leaves, not five.178 One of the most important research aspects of the Society in its early days was the amassing of a library a collection of books and, perhaps even more scientifically valuable, journals, to which it either subscribed or obtained in exchange for the Societys Transactions. The records of the Society list these exchanges and they suggest an international array, including New Zealand, the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, the South Kensington Science Museum, the Australian Museum (Sydney), the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, other Royal Societies, the Missouri Botanical Gardens, the Smithsonian Institution, the Bulletin de la Societ Imperiale des Naturalistes de Moscow, the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India and many, many more. So onerous did the administration of this burgeoning library become for the Royal Society of South Africa that in the 1930s the many thousands of volumes were given over to the University of Cape Town library to store, curate and conserve under professional conditions.179 While there would be general agreement that the Royal Society has rightly attempted to meet the new challenges of South African society in order to avoid becoming an anachronism, some Fellows have recorded their dissatisfaction with a modern way of life. In 1977 Dr Douglas Hey, well known Cape fisheries expert and conservationist, was saddened by what he felt was a decline in the highest standards of dignified conduct that had generally been exhibited at Society meetings. For example, in his opinion, the dress code was far less formal than he thought appropriate and there were too many visitors at meetings who were not being signed in by Fellows and Members as they should be. But worst of all, he noted, recently there had been an unfortunate tendency to be less formal in the conduct of meetings, e.g. in introducing speakers by their first names rather than by title. A considerable discussion ensued at the Council meeting at which this matter was raised, and those present generally shared Heys concern regarding the protection of the dignity and standing of the society. However, it was pointed out that the real need was for the Society to maintain standards of scientific integrity and vigour, even if this had to

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South African governments during this period has varied in extent, financial support and focus. It is not the task of the present work to explore this in any detail but it is necessary to outline briefly the effects that these have had on the Royal Society of South Africa, given its name and the time, place and context in which it was founded and in which it has developed and flourished. The role of the monarch of Great Britain (from whom the Society received its Charter) diminished in South African affairs from 1910 onwards. The Society appears to have been rather nave in its constitutional understanding because with the Royal Visit looming in 1947, its officers thought it would be appropriate to have its statutory changes ratified by the King. The precise wording of the Charter and Statutes reflected that the King would act in regard to the Society through one of our Principal Secretaries and when John Goodwin, who was President of the Royal Society of South Africa at the time, asked the British High Commissioner who this august person might be, one suspects that he was a little disappointed to discover that it was, in fact, the Minister of the Interior in the South African Government and that there would be no approach to the King.184 What South Africa might comprise in a world and region that was very different some fifty years after the Societys foundation was considered at a Council meeting on 7 September 1962, not long after the Republic of South Africa had come into being. The issue arose in connection with the eligibility of a resident in Southern Rhodesia to join the Society. It was agreed by the Council that as South Africa in 1908 would have included Northern and Southern Rhodesia (then under the British South Africa Company) and the Bechuanaland Protectorate, this wide regionality should be retained, indeed, some members of Council saw the Societys domain as being Africa south of the equator .185 This was a brave statement at a time when South Africa was already being pilloried by many newly decolonised countries in Africa. By the end of 1962 the Society was unavoidably drawn into South African politics and forced to take a stand in tackling an apartheid government assault on its Statutes regarding Membership and Fellowship. A letter dated 16 November 1962 addressed to the Koninglike Vereniging van Suid-Afrika was received from the Acting Secretary for Education, Arts and Science, a missive which was also dispatched by that Department to many other learned, professional and sporting groups in South Africa. It announced that mixed membership of such organisations would no longer be permitted and demanded that where such existed it cease immediately. Non-whites should have their own societies. The letter stated that the Government had observed that the Royal Societys constitution allowed for African or non-white membership and pointed out that unless this were changed, the Society would lose any government financial aid it might enjoy. An immediate response was demanded. The Councils minutes of the time reflect the Societys perspective on apartheid and on science, emphasising that membership was and is on the basis of scientific and professional qualifications alone, and that an all-white membership would jeopardise relationships with other countries and other Societies and possibly be detrimental to the aims and objects of the Society. Moreover, more generally, such a policy would receive immediate, hostile and harmful publicity through the world, that separate, racially based societies would not be viable, and that the countrys need for scientific and technical manpower was such that to place South African scientists and scholars under any handicap whatsoever, or to impose any obstacle to

the free dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge and the creation of a larger and more fully informed body of scientific manpower would be most inopportune.186 The Society heard a rumour that the matter would be quietly dropped because of divisions of opinion within Government, but this proved to be untrue and the issue remained in the forefront of the Societys concerns for a number of years. The firm statement was made that the Society does not and cannot accept the principle of the exclusion of qualified scientists from its membership upon grounds of race,187 and in August 1963 the Royal Society was asked by the South African Ornithological Society to take the lead as the senior scientific society in South Africa in coordinating action against racially based science. The Society did so, one result being a meeting with sixteen other societies held on 14 December 1962 and the drafting of a statement for publication in Nature where this matter had been raised in an editorial.188 The government did not rest, however, and in 1964 asked the Society whether it had yet amended its constitution. There was a curt response: The Society is unable to change its constitution in the manner proposed189 (although there were no black members or Fellows at that time) and further, the unanimous feeling of the Council was that no reputable scientific society can legitimately debar persons with appropriate scientific qualifications from benefits of membership on grounds of race alone.190 At that time also science itself became permeated with notions of what exactly race was, and the anthropological work of Phillip Tobias in this regard has been seminal to an understanding our sub-continental past. In the mid-1980s there was a flurry of correspondence with the New York Academy of Sciences and similar bodies in Denmark that were threatening a South African academic boycott, considering terminating their exchange of journals with the Society and thus anxious to know the Royal Society of South Africas policy regarding the freedom of scientists and scientific activities. The reply was a firm one: we ignore race, sex and creed in all matters pertaining to the Society.191 The Royal in the Societys name also came under some threat in the 1970s and in his opening address of the 1977 centenary celebrations President A.W. Sloan was at pains to explain that the word held no sinister political implications in the Republic of South Africa.192 As South Africa renegotiated its international relations it was beneficial to air a matter that might have been of concern to some members, in particular the senior scientists in quasi- or semi-government positions who were Fellows and Members of the Society. From the emerging Transvaal Branch membership in 1975 came a suggestion that the Royal Society be replaced with a phrase such as the South African Academy of Science. After discussion in the Council, however, it was decided to retain the Royal because the Society had a long history and strong profile within South Africa, together with the fact that the name carried associations with other distinguished bodies throughout the world. A further important consideration was that Royal was associated more with excellence than it was with the British crown as was the case with a number of Irish institutions that retained the adjective Royal193 and that any change would have practical repercussions by way of the Charter and Society publications.194 The matter was not entirely laid to rest though, and in 1982 the Royal so hard fought for in 1908 again came up for discussion as being a link to former British and Commonwealth connections rather than a connotation of high quality. It was agreed that a public relations campaign was required to set the record straight, but an alternative to drop the word Royal might also be possible. While this had considerable practical difficulties, if it were in the best interests of the Society

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the Council would consider the matter further so as to protect its principal goal which was the furtherance of science in South Africa.195 In the event, with a new Constitution since 1994, South Africas very acceptable international profile and its rejoining the Commonwealth, the adjective is less contentious than it once was and is, again, a matter of national pride. Providing access to funding is a major conduit by which state support for science is recognised and once the Union of South Africa had been established, the Royal Society of South Africa wasted no time in applying for money from the fiscus to promote important and worthwhile research projects. Society President Sydney Hough wrote to Prime Minister Louis Botha on 19 July 1910 suggesting that research be funded, and suggesting something like the annual grant that was awarded to the Royal Society of London. In 1911 there was talk of a National Research Fund being established, administered jointly by the S2A3 and the Royal Society.196 Although this did not formally come about, Hough reported in 1912 that a fund had been started with money from the Union government for assisting research work in science.197 In 1918, at the end of the First World War during which science and technology had played such a vital role, the government again suggested forming a Research Grant Board and taking away from the Society the privilege of research funding. The Royal Society of South Africa protested, believing that pure science would be neglected if this were done as the government would, inevitably, give preference to technological and industrial projects that would show direct political or economic returns.198 The records suggest that the Union government generally granted the Society 500 per annum to award to worthy research projects. There appears to have been some competition between the Royal Society of South Africa and the S2A3 for funding because the Society was constantly defending the need to support pure scientific research against practical or industrial research. This found acceptance with the then Minister of Education who increased the grant in 1917 to 600.199 The distinction between basic and applied science is less clear today than it was a century ago. As Lord Porter of Luddenham, joint Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner in 1967 and for many years Director of the Royal Institution, expressed it in 1990: there was only science, that already applied, and that which had not yet been applied.200 During the Depression of the 1930s the national exchequer was empty and the Royal Society found it extremely difficult to get money out of government to meet its commitments. In 1931 the grant was reduced to 50, while in 1932 there was no grant at all.201 It resumed a few years later. Some of the old records provide a flavour of the research that the Society supported in the early years. Dorothea Bleek, the San linguist, had her trip to the Kalahari with Miss Wollmer paid for in 1913, and Bleeks report contains a lively description of her travels, her meetings with hunter-gatherer people and the wildlife she encountered. That same year G. Arnold was granted 45 to study the insect fauna of Rhodesia, while Carruthers Beattie received 100 for the survey of magnetism in the northern Cape and E. Goetz the same amount for similar work in Rhodesia. E.J. Goddard used 50 to study mountain Crustacea, Miss A.M. Tucker, 75 for her ethnological enquiries among a Khoisan clan and the Bondelswarts people in South West Africa. In 1914 75 covered Alex L. du Toits travels in Australia to study Gondwana rocks and other landforms. F.W. FitzSimons received 100 to excavate fossil human remains and Miss Maria Wilman 50 to copy San paintings and engravings. The year 1917 was also filled with funded research activity: K.H. Barnard collected fresh water crustaceans; J.W. Bewss

32 paid for some of his plant succession work in South Africas savannah; J.T. Morrison studied the tides; Arthur Bryant collected and recorded Zulu oral traditions; and M. Rindl conducted chemical investigations of some toxic and medicinal South African plants.202 While funding structures and budgets have changed, support and recognition of a wide diversity of scientific disciplines remain Royal Society priorities. Although direct involvement in South Africas politics has not been the concern of the Society, it does have a political mission in furthering science to promote the national welfare and directing government into support for scientific research and the dissemination of knowledge. This is not an advocacy task that can be accomplished alone. In this regard the Society has worked with government through workshops and colloquia as well as in personal meetings so as to assist, promote and contribute to a number of projects in the national interest. These have been as widely different as a subcontinental magnetic station (1912), work on the upper atmosphere (1913), the national botanic gardens (1913), the Antarctic, satellite imagery, nuclear power as well as the drafting of Bills and laws that relate to science and technology. Sometimes cooperation with government has been easier than at other times, as Nabarro put it in 1987: The government of South Africa is perhaps less prone than some other governments to seek or to receive with encouragement independent advice Nevertheless in scientific matters we should offer advice, whether asked or unasked.203 Naturally circumstances in the country have altered dramatically since 1987 but the Societys role is still to advise the government in matters of science. For many years the Society was represented on bodies such as the Scientific Advisory Council and the National Parks Board and its Fellows and members have distinguished themselves in their discipline specialist societies. Mention was made earlier of a 1975 suggestion that the Royal Society of South Africa should become the countrys Academy of Science considering that it was, in fact, the national academy. There has been a variety of models in this regard. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Royal Society is also the Academy, but in Australia the Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London founded the Australian Academy of Science in 1954 without any reference to the word Royal although the Academy is modelled on the Royal Society of London and was granted a Royal Charter .204 In 1974 the Royal Society of Canada was reorganised into three separate Academies, two for Humanities and Social Sciences (one French and one English) and one for Science within the overall name of the Royal Society of Canada.205 In the United States the National Academy of Sciences has a long history, having been created by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. With its diverse and troubled history, South Africa took the decision to create a new Academy of Science of South Africa (2001) in order to suit the new political context of post-1994 South Africa. In this development, the Royal Society of South Africa was enabling and extremely supportive. The Society has taken a keen interest in universities and other educational structures of the country and individual Fellows and Members have been inspired and passionate teachers. Moreover, the Society has worked closely with other related societies, never considering them as competitors as Sir Joseph Banks once did with detrimental consequences to the Royal Society of London. The science community comprises organisations with different aims and agendas and cooperation that utilises the strengths of each is the most productive way forward. In his Presidential Address to the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society of London on 30 November 1990 Lord Porter raised the question of the future of that Society in the new

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millennium. He compared its strengths and weaknesses with those of other groups of scientists, such as the formal academies under government control or allied to the state, the groups that do little or nothing, and those that exist to give members the opportunity to talk about science. Good luck to them, he concluded, would that there were more. He believed that the future of the Royal Society lay in the Fellowship, people who are the most highly qualified scientific professionals in the Commonwealth, who straddle all areas of the natural sciences, independent of government and active in international scientific affairs.206 This might just as aptly apply to the Royal Society of South Africa. When the Royal Society of South Africa was founded in 1908 there were many professional and specialist scientific bodies in existence as well as two other more general scientific societies around the same time, the S2A3 and the Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns. For many decades the latter society concentrated on cultural rather than scientific issues and received both government support and direct funding. Soon after its foundation, the Royal Society of South Africa in the Cape began a process of voluntary amalgamation and/or collaboration with other societies. The Council minutes record these initiatives and tracking them all in detail would provide fascinating insights into the institutionalisation of science in South Africa. In 1912, for example, the Royal Society had fused with the Cape Chemical Society but the Society of Civil Engineers decided to go its own way.207 Amalgamating with the S2A3 was raised in 1918 and 1919 but, in the event, the Royal Society prized its independence and its peer system too highly to compromise and, in any event, the two societies did not always overlap in function.208 Over the years, meetings, conferences, symposia and projects have been conducted in partnership with a variety of organisations including the South African Archaeological Society, the Zoological Society of Southern Africa, the South African Institute of Marine Engineers, the South African Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the South African Ornithological Society and others. Moreover, the Society has open links to other societies around the world including the Royal Society of London (working closely on an Aldabra Island project in the mid-1960s) and many more. The Society was also, for example, a co-signatory of an international Declaration for the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1982. But much earlier, even in Paris in 1900, the South African Philosophical Society was represented at the International Committee of Academies, in 1931 at the International Council of Scientific Unions and in 1946 at the Royal Society Empire Scientific Conferences. It kept up a connection with Russian scientists even in 1935. The change of government in 1994 has brought South Africa back into the international community and new links have been forged with Hungary and Egypt. But equally since 1994 the institutional structures of science in South Africa have changed with the passing of new legislation and the inauguration of a ministry of Science and Technology, as well as the commencement in 2001 of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Part of the mission of the Society is to be South African and this has meant meeting the scientific challenges of the subcontinent specifically. In this regard, the Societys initiation of and contribution to interdisciplinary conferences, symposia, colloquia and workshops has contributed substantially to an understanding of the natural and intellectual environments. This type of contribution began in earnest in 1964 when a shortage of specialist papers for publication in the Transactions made the Society react more directly to its multi-disciplinary mission and the idea of themes and subjects was suggested.209 These have been extremely successful and have played a part in bringing

specialist knowledge and acumen to bear on troublesome or intractable issues and integrating different research platforms. To list just some of them: False Bay (1968 and 1991), Durban Harbour (1968), the Quaternary in South Africa (1969), amino acids (1970), Saldanha Bay and Langebaan Lagoon (1976), research in the natural sciences (1976), The present state and future of the sciences in South Africa (Centenary Symposium 1977), the Benguella upwelling (1981), the Bot River estuary (1983), flood at the Orange River mouth (1988), Robert Broom (1948), John Herschel (1992), Thomas Maclear (1994), J.L.B. Smith Institute of Ichthyology (1996), marine science in South Africa (1997), implications of the new Water Policy (1998), the Kalahari ecosystem (1998), the Knysna estuary (2000), nuclear power (2001), desert fauna and flora (2004). There have also been Festschriften on Frank Nabarro (2003), Phillip Tobias (2005) and Basil Cooke (2006). DISSEMINATING SCIENCE In 1860, Roderick Noble, editor of the Cape Monthly Magazine, accused scientists of having a hardness about them too often extending to materialism and of presenting their work as a mere dry narration of facts.210 He had clearly missed the fascination and importance of a particular way of approaching knowledge and life on earth. Nonetheless, the scientific paradigms have shifted over the centuries and today scientists are perhaps less secure in their dry narrations. The Royal Society of South Africa has not been afraid to address the question of changes in the science arena, and there was a thoroughgoing think-tank in the society in 1987 eighty years after its foundation. Discussion was based on a document prepared by Frank Nabarro that outlined the need for a detailed debate on the Societys future in changing scientific and political and economic circumstances. While no single transformation emanated from this discussion, changes ensued, thus demonstrating that the Society has not hesitated to change its configuration and priorities in order to remain relevant and to bring science to the attention of a new generation on its own terms. Another investigation into the Societys role and future was compiled as a SWOT analysis by ichthyologist Mike Bruton in 1996. Once again, the Society has tried to respond to new challenges within the scientific matrix of the country and in terms of its governmental, institutional and educational structures.211 The responsibility for furthering science includes a mandate to publicise science and to promote aspects of knowledge that chime with contemporary concerns. In 1993, eminent cosmologist George Ellis gave an invaluable position paper on Priorities in South African science policy in a changing economic and political context212 that took account of historical changes in the country as they related to appropriate scientific endeavour. The involvement of Fellows, such as Ellis, in ensuring that the Royal Society of South Africa has not become stuffy or outdated, and that it continues to rejuvenate itself by maintaining its commitment to a common project science in South African society has been a distinct strength of the Society over the last century. It is this awareness of the changing knowledge environment and contextual worldview that has perhaps been responsible, more than any other aspect of its work, for ensuring that the Society continues to occupy its position as a premier scientific academy in South Africa. Over the years, a number of presidential addresses have dealt with critical philosophical and contextual issues. In 1956 geologist Sidney Haughton eschewed a specialist topic for his presidential address and discussed Cooperation in science and technology thus harking back, in some respects, to the debate between Gill and the Transvaal engineers in the early

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1900s. Haughton noted how disciplines had changed since 1877, and questioned whether the Royal Society of South Africa was still relevant in an era of specialisation. He was concerned that the Society might be a body floating quietly and sedately in a backwater while its Fellows and Members were, as individuals, maintaining their positions in the fast-flowing streams of their disciplines. Haughton spoke to a period after the Second World War, a war in which technology had proved to be extremely powerful. He also spoke to a world that was beginning to feel the effects of cooperative international management in science as well as in other fields.213 The United Nations Organisation had come into being, as had many of the modern international bodies such as UNESCO, FAO, WHO, IUCN and GATT, and Haughton addressed the contribution that the Royal Society of South Africa could make in this context. His presentation concentrated on what science and technology might mean in Africa food production, disease and pest control, welfare issues around training, education, housing, population and labour, matters in which the Social Sciences were playing a larger part. Haughton suggested that the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa could further such studies by avoiding what he called isolated contributions to knowledge in one branch of science and preferring to publish synthetic work in order to promote comparison and synthesis of the information held by specialist workers. Indeed, the Transactions have subsequently moved in that direction.214 Addressing the interface between science and technology directly was President W.S. Rapson, a chemist, who spoke on Science and the future of the mining and mineral industries in 1965.215 Shortly before, in 1960, the Presidential Address of Stefan Meiring Naud, physicist turned science-manager and then President of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, also gave a broad presentation. This was at the height of the Cold War and just before South Africa became a Republic. Naud lauded the Russians for their focus on scientific research, contrasting their centralised organisational structures under government control with the more laissez faire, but perhaps no less successful, operations in the capitalist world. But whatever route was taken, Naud argued that South Africas structures were poor, and he advocated the reorganisation of South African science under a number of research councils with specialist roles to play but each relatively free of government bureaucracy. In such schemes, however, the commitment of the general public to science was vital for success.216 The 1977 centenary commemoration of the Royal Society of South Africa proved an occasion for scientific soul-searching as well as for celebration. The Vice-President of the Royal Society of London, geologist John Sutton, Dean of the Royal School of Mines (Imperial College), gave an address entitled An international view of the present and future of science. He contrasted the state of science in John Herschels time with that of the 1970s and made some comparisons between Britain and South Africa. But the main thrust of his address was to emphasise how the Royal Society of London had been born at the right moment for the growth of science in Britain and how debates around scientific purpose, direction, organisation and management had remained priorities from the start.217 Recalling Sloans interesting presidential address The nature of science, or biochemist Wieland Geverss The art of the insoluble, or University of Cape Town Vice-Chancellor Mamphela Rampheles Science and transformation of South Africa into account,218 as well as other papers, the same can perhaps be said of the Royal Society of South Africa. In their Presidential addresses (a tradition that has been

Presidents of the Royal Society of South Africa

1908 Mr S.S. Hough 1912 Dr L. Pringuey 1918 Dr J.D.F. Gilchrist 1923 Dr A. Ogg 1928 Dr W.A. Jolly 1933 Dr A.W. Rogers 1936 Prof. L. Crawford 1942 Prof. A. Brown 1946 Prof. R.S. Adamson 1949 Dr. J. Jackson 1950 Prof. R.W. James 1953 Dr S.H. Skaife 1955 Dr S.H. Haughton 1957 Prof. E. Newbery 1959 Prof. A.J.H. Goodwin 1960 Dr S. Meiring Naud 1962 Dr M.R. Levyns 1964 Dr W.S. Rapson 1966 Prof. W.J. Lutjeharms 1968 Dr G.G. Campbell 1970 Prof. P.V. Tobias 1972 Prof. N. Sapeika 1974 Prof. W.J. Talbot 1977 Prof. A.W. Sloan 1979 Prof. A.C. Brown 1981 Prof. B. Warner 1983 Prof. E.S.W. Simpson 1984 Prof. R.C. Bigalke 1987 Prof. W. Gevers 1989 Prof. F.R.N. Nabarro 1992 Prof. G.R.F. Ellis 1997 Prof. O.W. Prozesky 1999 Prof . J.P.F. Sellschop 2002 Prof. L.R. Nassembeni 2004 Prof. D.E. Rawlings 2006 Prof. J.D. Skinner
Figure 8. Presidents of the Royal Society of South Africa.

discontinued) most presidents have not adopted an inquisitive broad-brush approach to science but have given masterly summaries of aspects of their own disciplines, thus sharing their knowledge with the wider community. In this regard one can mention but a few in chronological order that appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa and provide a flavour of the variety and expertise within the Society over the years: Sydney S. Hough, Some recent improvements in transit observations (Vol. 2). Louis Pringuey, The Bushman as Palaeolithic Man (Vol. 4). Alexander Ogg, Some aspects of modern physics (Vol. 17). Arthur W. Rogers, The solid geology of the Kalahari (Vol. 24). Sydney H. Skaife, The Argentine ant, Iriodomyrmex humilis Mayr (Vol. 34). Sidney H. Haughton, The geophysicist and some geological problems (Vol. 35).

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Figure 9. The present Council of the Royal Society of South Africa. Front row, left to right: Maciej Soltynski, Margaret Avery, John Skinner, Tony Ribbink, Doug Rawlings. Back row: Brian Schaller, Jane Carruthers, Rudi van Aarde, Judith Sealy. Insets: Ian Glass, John Moss, Klaus Koch, Luigi Nassimbeni, Peter Vale, Susan Bourne.

Margaret R. Levyns, Migration and origin of the Cape flora (Vol. 37). George G. Campbell, A review of the scientific investigations in the Tongaland area of northern Natal (Vol. 38). Wilhelm J. Lutjeharms, Centenary of a fungus: Some reflections on the metabolism of fungi (Vol. 38). Phillip V . Tobias, Recent human biological studies in southern Africa with special reference to Negroes and Khoisans (Vol. 40). Brian Warner, High speed astronomy (Vol. 45). In addition to a role of support for science and the initiation of new directions, policies or means of enhancing the image of scientists, the Royal Society of South Africas responsibility is also to publicise and disseminate science in all its aspects. Since1908 it has done so in a number of ways. The most important traditional method of relaying research results and conveying fresh thinking about knowledge is the publication of a respected journal. In this regard the Society has continued the tradition inherited from the South African Philosophical

Society of the regular publication of Transactions. After one hundred years of continuous publication, this journal can be mined as a history of science in South Africa and many other authors in this present volume of the Transactions will, no doubt, do this in respect of their own disciplines. A glance at any contents page of the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa will provide evidence of the manner in which diverse topics have coalesced to provide a scientific perspective on the region and added to the body of knowledge about it. This is not to say that individual scientists have not also published their research in specialist journals, but the Transactions has played a specific part in giving an overall view of science in South Africa. The fact that it has survived for a century, and weathered the dominance of specialist disciplines is to its credit indeed, it is now well poised to take advantage of a growing interdisciplinary thrust. Initially, the Transactions only published papers that had been presented to the Society and were thus peer reviewed in this manner. In practice this has proved difficult to sustain. Not until 1972 did the journal have a formal policy and A.C. Brown was responsible for drawing up a set of guidelines that have

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generally been followed ever since.219 The policy issue was again aired in 1987 when the Societys role was discussed by Council and it was agreed that the era of the generalist scientific publication was over and that short reports and science policy should perhaps be the Societys brief. Thus keeping abreast of developments in science became a new priority. Incoming editor S.S.B. Gilder set out the matter clearly in 1987 and identified the two areas in which the Transactions could contribute. The first was as a vehicle for publications of scholarly papers setting out the results of scientific observation and research, while the second was to record reviews of scientific progress presented to the Fellows and Members of the Society at their meetings. The gist of the discussion was that in terms of the first objective, the Transactions were among the finest in South Africa, but regarding the second there was work to be done.220 The Transactions has been responsive to the changing publication environment. The status of the journal is internationally recognised by both ISI and ISSN. The variety of contents has broadened and since 2002 papers in all branches of science, engineering, medicine and related fields as well as brief communications, review articles, longer monographs, including conference and workshop proceedings and festschriften are considered for publication. Indeed, special attention is still being given to the publication of monographs. Publicising science can take many forms, and as well as the erudition of Presidential addresses and publishing the Transactions, the Society has experimented over the years with a variety of attractive and informative gatherings. The various branches hold lectures for students and the general public, often with a specific regional focus. Lecture series have proved popular, for example, that arranged in 1971 by Professor Phillip Tobias at the University of the Witwatersrand, around the centenary of the publication of Charles Darwins The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. This was the follow-up to Darwins On the Origin of Species (1859), and it showed how his evolutionary theory might be applied to ideas on racial difference, evolutionary psychology and ethics. Symposia and lectures were also offered to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Linnaeuss death (1958) and in honour of Raymond Dart and Louis Leakey. These and other events have been co-hosted by South Africas scientific societies, the S2A3, the Archaeological Society, Geological Society and others, thus attracting multiple audiences and, on occasion, filling even the capacious Great Hall of the University of the Witwatersrand to capacity.221 CONCLUSION As Lord Porter, President of the Royal Society of London and Nobel Prize Winner, expressed it in 1999, We need to tell of science as a great odyssey, a search for truth and understanding of ourselves and our universe that is the ultimate aspiration of science222 Porter s own career in science encapsulates the core values of the Royal Society of South Africa: exceptional research excellence, a duty to communicate scientific findings and demonstrate their relevance even to the extent of popularisation if this inspires and encourages scholars and the public, the engagement with government at all levels and in all parts of the world to provide funding and support, liaison with other similar-minded institutions, and the merging not only of applied and pure science, but even to bring together the two cultures the humanities and sciences. In order to summarise the history and contribution of the Royal Society of South Africa one would have to include its continuing focus on the reward, encouragement and promotion of excellence; its readiness to compromise without losing

sight of ethical and quality considerations; its attitude of social responsibility in science policy and education; its balancing the need to uphold tradition but keep up with modern developments; its maintenance of international and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary links; its distance from government and party politics and its dissemination of research results. It is the principal forum for peer appraisal in science: prestigious, individual and quality orientated. And it is the meeting ground of people who not only share their knowledge, but debate it, question it, appreciate it and who are dedicated to advancing it. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank the following for their assistance for reading and commenting on drafts of this article and for locating and/or photographing sources or illustrations: Vincent Carruthers, Nico Dippenaar, Saul Dubow, Ian Glass, Howard Phillips, Libby Robin, John Skinner and Maciej Soltynski. I would like make special mention of the generous help I received from Phillip Tobias who not only commented on the text itself, but suggested additions and improvements. I am grateful to the helpful staff of the following libraries and archives: the University of South Africa (Mary-Lynn Suttie), the Johannesburg Public Library, The Brenthurst Library (Diana Madden, Rae Simkins and Alan Garlick), the University of Cape Town Manuscript Collections (Leslie Hart and Isaac Ntambankulu), the National Archives of South Africa in Cape Town and Tshwane, the Archives of the South African Astronomical Observatory (Ian Glass), and the Royal Society of South Africa (Sandra de Villiers-Soltynski). Photograph credits/copyright as follows: Thomas Muir, courtesy of the South African National Library; David Gill and Sydney Hough, courtesy of the South African Astronomical Observatory; Sydney Hele-Shaw, courtesy of the Royal Society, London.
This article is accompanied by supplementary material online at http://www.journals.co.za/ej/ejour_royalsa.html

UNPUBLISHED ARCHIVAL SOURCES National Archives of South Africa (NASA)

Cape Archives (KAB) CO (Colonial Office) 235 112. GH (Government House) 23/28; 23/82; 23/102; 23/104; 23/107; 23/113; 35/221; 1/284. PMO (Prime Minister) 224 143/06. T (Treasury) 1083. Central Government (SAB) HER (Heraldry) 1079 GK/GN 1788 H4/3/1/2541. UOD (Education) 000/00 Misc 6. UOD 712 E18/1. UOD 775 E23/10. BIS (Advisory Board for Industry and Science) 8 S9/2. BNS (Interior) 1/1/274 371/73. Transvaal Archives (TAB) CS (Colonial Secretary) 473 4375/04. GOV (Governor) 642 PS 12/04. GOV 802 PS 5/7/05. EC (Executive Council) 48 EC530/124/04. Royal Society of South Africa (RSSAf) P.D. Hahn Building, University of Cape Town Files: Policy (Series 1). Files: Administration (Series 2). Files: Finance (Series 3). Files: Membership (Series 4). Files: Branches (Series 5). Files: Medal Awards (Series 6). Files: Activities (Series 7). Files: Conferences (Series 8).

Carruthers: Scientists in society: the Royal Society of South Africa Files: Social Functions (Series 9). Files: Publications (Series 10). Files: Relations with other bodies (Series 11). Minutes: Royal Society of South Africa Council meetings, 19082006. Minutes: Royal Society of South Africa Ordinary meetings 19082006. Minutes: South African Philosophical Society Council meetings 1877 1908. Minutes: South African Philosophical Society Ordinary meetings 1877 1907. Copies of letters 18781013. Correspondence Royal Charter. Correspondence 1902. Books received 18991902. Research grants 19111920.

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PUBLISHED SOURCES Journals Cape Monthly Magazine. 18571863, 18701879, 18791881. Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales. 19071908. Proceedings of the Barberton Scientific and Literary Society. 18881889. Proceedings of the Natal Scientific Society. 1912. Royal Society of Queensland: Proceedings. 27 and 36100. 1916, 19241989. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa.19082007. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. 18771900. Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria. 1888, 1910, 1914. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society.18771908 Books and journal articles ANDRADE, E.N. DA C. 1960. A Brief History of the Royal Society. London, The Royal Society. 28 pp. BABBAGE, C. 1970. Reflections on the Decline of Science in England and on Some of its Causes. Facsimile of London, B. Fellows 1830, repr. New York, Augustus M. Kelley. 261 pp. BASALLA, G. 1967. The spread of western science. Science 156: 614617. BEINART, W. 1998. Men, science, travel and nature in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Cape. Journal of Southern African Studies 24(4): 775799 BERMAN, M. 1978. Social Change and Scientific Organisation: The Royal Institution, 17991844. London etc., Heinemann. 224 pp. BIRCH, T.. 1968. The History of the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge From its First Rise. 4 vols. Facsimile of London edition of 17567. New York & London, Johnson Reprint Corporation. BOTHA, H.C. 1984. John Fairbairn in South Africa. Cape Town, Historical Publication Society. 336 pp. BOUCHER, M. 1973. Spes in Arduis: A History of the University of South Africa. Pretoria, University of South Africa. 407 pp. BOWLER, P. 1992. The Fontana History of the Environmental Sciences. London, Fontana. 800 pp. BRADLOW, E. 2002. The British Associations South African meeting, 1905: The Flight of the colonies and some post Anglo-Boer War problems. South African Historical Journal 46:4262. BROWN, A.C. (Ed.) 1977. A History of Scientific Endeavour in South Africa. Cape Town, Royal Society of South Africa. 516 pp. CHAMBERS, W. 1994. Book review: Science and Empires: Historical Studies about Scientific Development and European Expansion. 1994. Historical Records of Australian Science 10(1):8384. COUNCIL FOR SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH. 1949. Science in South Africa. Pretoria, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. 176 pp. DE BEER, E.S. (Ed.) 1959. The Diary of John Evelyn. London, Oxford University Press. 1307 pp.

DRAYTON, R. 2000. Natures Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the Improvement of the World. New Haven & London, Yale University Press. 346 pp. DUBOW, S. 2006. A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa, 18202000. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 296 pp. DUBOW, S., (Ed.) 2000. Science and Society in Southern Africa. Manchester, Manchester University Press. 241 pp. ELPHICK, R & GILIOMEE, H. (Eds) 1989. The Shaping of South African Society, 16521840. Cape Town, Maskew Miller Longman. 623 pp. FLINT, W. & GILCHRIST, J.D.F. 1905. (Eds) Science in South Africa: A Handbook and Review. Cape Town, T. Maskew Miller. 505 pp. GRIFFITHS, T. 1996. Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 416 pp. HALL, M.B. 1984. All Scientists Now: The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 261 pp. HARTLEY, H. (Ed.) 1960. The Royal Society: Its Origins and Founders. London, The Royal Society. 275 pp. HUMAN SCIENCES RESEARCH COUNCIL 19681987. Dictionary of South African Biography. 5 Vols. Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council. HUNTER, M. 1994. The Royal Society and its Fellows: The Morphology of an Early Scientific Institution. 2nd edn. Chalfont St Giles, Bucks, British Society for the History of Science. 291 pp. INKSTER, I. & MORRELL, J. (Eds) 1983. Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture, 17801840. London, Hutchinson. 288 pp. JARDINE, N., SECORD J. & SPARY E. (Eds) 1996. Cultures of Natural History. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 523 pp. JARDINE, L. 2003. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man who Measured London. London, Harper Perennial. 422 pp. KUHN, T.S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. LE CORDEUR, B. 1981. The Politics of Eastern Cape Separatism, 18201854. Cape Town, Oxford University Press. 314 pp. LONGMORE, R. (Ed.) 1994. Biodiversity Broadening the Debate 3. Some Further Discussion Papers. Canberra, Australian Nature Conservation Agency. 71 pp. LYONS, H. 1968. The Royal Society 16601940: A History of its Administration under its Charters. New York, Greenwood Press. 354 pp. MACKENZIE, J.M. (Ed.) 1990. Imperialism and the Natural World. Manchester, Manchester University Press. 216 pp. MOORE, P. & COLLINS, P. 1977. The Astronomy of Southern Africa. Cape Town, Howard Timmins. 160 pp. MORRELL, J. & THACKRAY, A. 1981. Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 592 pp. PETITJEAN, P., JAMI, C. & MOULIN, A.M. (Eds) 1992. Science and Empires: Historical Studies about Scientific Development and European Expansion. Dordrecht, Kluwer. 411 pp. PHILLIPS, H. 1993. The University of Cape Town 19181948: The Formative Years. Cape Town, University of Cape Town Press. 482 pp. PLUG, C. 1992. Scientific societies in South Africa to the end of the nineteenth century. South African Journal of Science 88: 256261. PLUG, C. 2005. South African science in the year 1905100n. South African Journal of Science 101:34. PURVER, M. 1967. The Royal Society: Concept and Creation. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. 246 pp. ROBIN, L. & STEFFEN, W. 2007. History for the Anthropocene, History Compass 5. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/hico/0/0 ROSENTHAL, E. (Comp.) 1966. Southern African Dictionary of National Biography. London, Frederick Warne. 430 pp. ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 1932. Fifty Years Retrospect: Canada, 18821932. Toronto, Ryerson Press. 179 pp. ROYAL SOCIETY, THE. 1940. The Record of the Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge. London, The Royal Society. 578 pp. SHEAIL, J. 1987. Seventy-Five Years in Ecology: The British Ecological Society. Oxford, Blackwell. 301 pp. SOUTH AFRICAN WHOS WHO. 1909. South African Whos Who 1909: An Illustrated Biographical Sketch Book of South Africans. London, Bemrose & Sons. 540 pp.

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SPRAT, T. 1958. History of the Royal Society. Edited with critical apparatus by J.I. Cope and H.W. Jones. Facsimile of 1667 edition. St Louis Missouri, Washington University Press. 517 pp. STUCHTEY, B. (Ed.) 2005. Science Across the European Empires, 18001950. Oxford, German Historical Institute London. 376 pp. TIMES, THE. 1961. The Royal Society Tercentenary, 16601960. London, The Times. 195 pp. WARNER, B. 1979. Astronomers at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. Cape Town, University of Cape Town. 132 pp. WILLIAMS, D. 2005. The Lord Porter of Luddenham. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149: 108111. WORDEN, N., VAN HEYNINGEN, E. & BICKFORD-SMITH, V., 1998. Cape Town: The Making of a City. Cape Town, David Philip. 283 pp. INTERNET SOURCES http://www.rsnz.org/directory/act/ (13 December 2006). http://www.science.org/au/academy/academy/.htm (31 July 2007). http://www.rsc.ca (31 July 2007). ENDNOTES 1. A brief version of the history of the Society can be found on the website: http://rssa.rucus.ru.ac.za 2. Hall, All Scientists Now, 216. 3. Crawford, The South African Literary and Scientific Institution, 18321857, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 22: 313320. 4. Brown (ed.), History of Scientific Endeavour, 474487. 5. See for example the publications of Brian Warner. 6. Stuchtey (ed.), Science Across the European Empires, 187. 7. 7. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 10. 8. Stuchtey (ed.), Science Across the European Empires, 188. 9. Inkster and Morrell (eds), Metropolis and Province, 14. 10. 10. Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organisation, xxixxii. 11. Hall, All Scientists Now, 220. 12. Bowler, Fontana History of the Environmental Sciences, 23. 13. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 16. 14. Jardine et al (eds), Cultures of Natural History, 67. 15. Sheail, Seventy-five Years in Ecology, 1. 16. Longmore (ed.), Biodiversity, 28. 17. Basalla, The spread of western science, Science, 156: 614617. 18. Chambers review of Petitjean, Jami and Moulin (eds), Science and Empires in Historical Records of Australian Science 10: 84.19. 19. MacKenzie (ed.), Imperialism and the Natural World, 5. 20. Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organisation, xxixxii. 21. Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, 276 and 284. 22. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 166. 23. UCT BC478, Charter. 24. RSSAf Memorandum on steps taken towards the formation of a Royal Society of South Africa, Minutes of South African Philosophical Society, Annual Meeting, 8 August 1906. 25. Moore and Collins, Astronomy of Southern Africa, 7980. 26. Sloan, Opening address, Centenary Symposium of the Royal Society of South Africa, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 43: 220. 27. Lyons, Royal Society, 8. 28. Purver, Royal Society, 235. 29. Jardine, Curious Life, 9192. 30. Royal Society, Record of the Royal Society, 5556. 31. Sprat, History of the Royal Society. 32. De Beer, Diary of John Evelyn, 835. 33. Royal Society, Record of the Royal Society, 44. 34. Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organisation, xxi. 35. Babbage, Reflections, xiiixiv; 141152. 36. Quoted in Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, 47. 37. See Lyons, The Royal Society, Ch. 7. 38. See Lyons, The Royal Society, Ch. 7 and Inkster and Morrell (eds), Metropolis and Province, 5590.39. 39. Hall, All Scientists Now, 216; also Hunter, The Royal Society. 40. Hartley (ed.) The Royal Society, 17. 41. The Times, The Royal Society Tercentenary, 1112. 42. Drayton, Natures Government, 168.

43. Australian Dictionary of Biography online edition. 44. Orange in Inkster and Morrell (eds), Metropolis and Province, 1720; Bregman, Snug little coteries, 23. 45. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 23. 46. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 41. 47. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 18. 48. De Kiewiet quoted by Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 18. 49. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 18. 50. Elphick and Giliomee (eds), Shaping of South African Society, 497. 51. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 50. Fairbairn and Pringle had previously founded similar societies. 52. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 34. 53. Crawford, The South African Literary and Scientific Institution, 18321857, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 22: 315. 54. Quote from Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 34, see also 3034 and Bregman,Snug little coteries, 23. 55. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 58. 56. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 53; 57. 57. Australian Dictionary of Biography (online edition). 58. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 23. 59. Crawford, The South African Literary and Scientific Institution, 18321857, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 22: 315. See also Bregman Snug little coteries, 130. 60. Dubow Commonwealth of Knowledge, 40. 61. Duvow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 39. 62. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 2021. 63. See Crawford, The South African Literary and Scientific Institution, 18321857, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 22: 313. 64. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 79. 65. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 224. 66. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 39; Bregman, Snug little coteries, 165. 67. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 39; Bregman, Snug little coteries, 7679. 68. Quoted in Worden, Van Heyningen and Bickford-Smith, Cape Town, 132. 69. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 163. 70. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 116, 158. Among the topics discussed in 1830 were the state of the colony in 1804, the improvement of sheep breeding and the history of the Khoikhoi. 71. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 116; 143144. 72. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 151. 73. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 38. 74. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 181; Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 4041. 75. Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales for 1908, 42. 76. Transactions and Proceedings and Report of the Royal Society of South Australia (incorporated), 27: 316317, Annual Report; Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 7: 85, Prof. H. Lamb Presidential Address. 77. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, 93: 14. For Australia generally, see also MacLeod in Stuchtey (ed.), Science Across the European Empires, 175213. 78. http://www.rsnz.org/directory/act/ (13 December 2006). 79. Royal Society of Canada, Fifty Years Retrospect, Introduction by Lawrence J. Burpee, 13. 80. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 160. 81. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, chapter 1. 82. Qoted by Dubow Commonwealth of Knowledge,.43. 83. For Herschel see Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 4144. 84. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 219-223. 85. Bregman, Snug little coteries, 108. 86. Adamson in Cape Monthly Magazine, 1860, 7: 153154. 87. Cape Monthly Magazine, 1857 1: 2 88. Cape Monthly Magazine, 1857 2: 89. 89. CA GH 23/28 61. Grey to Duke of Newcastle 2 May 1861. 90. Cape Monthly Magazine, 1868 7: 129131. 91. Cape Monthly Magazine 1870 1(1) Preface. 92. Cape Monthly Magazine 1876 13. 93. RSSAf Minutes of the South African Philosophical Society, 22 June 1877.

Carruthers: Scientists in society: the Royal Society of South Africa 94. SAAO, Letter book 18791890, Rules of the South African Philosophical Society. 95. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society 18771878 1; see also Goodwin Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 19511952 33: iii 96. Goodwin, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 19511952 33: iii. 97. Boucher, Spes in Arduis, 40. 98. Boucher, Spes in Arduis, 80.99. 99. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 123. Dubow carefully analyses the whole notion of South Africa in Chapter 3, Colonialism, Imperialism, Constitutionalism. 100. Frere in Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society 18771878: xxiv 101. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, p. 113. 102. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society 1883 3: lvii. 103. SAAO, Robinson, Natural History Society Committee, Kimberley to Gill, 27 June 1892. 104. Brown (ed.), History of Scientific Endeavour, 478. 105. Plug, Scientific societies; Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 55. 106. Proceedings of the Barberton Scientific and Literary Society. 107. Plug, Scientific societies. 108. See Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors. 109. A selection from the Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society includes an address by Henry Morton Stanley; an overland Africa telegraph; preservation of Bushmen relics; tourmaline; Merriman on native witchcraft; collected geographical information; languages in Mozambique; weather bureau; acacias; Algoa Bay tides; Bartholomew Diaz pillars; animal intelligence; palaeolithic implements at Vereeniging; rock engravings and astronomy. 110. See Beinart, Men, science, travel and nature as well as Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society 1: 27. 111. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society, Proceedings, 30 January 1878. 112. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society, Proceedings, 13 November 1879. 113. I am extremely grateful to Dr Ian Glass for alerting me to this rich archive. 114. SAAO Guthrie to Pringuey, 2 September 1891. . 115. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society, 6: xvi. 116. See Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 254, for a brief history of the Akademie. 117. RSSAf, Minutes of the South African Philosophical Society, 22 June 1877. 118. TAB GOV 624 PS 12/04, Gill, Steps taken to obtain a Charter of Incorporation, n.d.; RSSAf South African Philosophical Society minutes 15 August 1899. 119. Dubow (ed.), Science in Society, 69. 120. See Dubow (ed.), Science in Society, 96 footnote 42. 121. Goodwin, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 33, 19511952: ivv. 122. SAAO Gill to Cursons, 2 August 1902. 123. Dubow (ed.), Science in Society, 6970. Quotation on page 70. 124. Dubow (ed.), Science in Society, 75; see also Edna Bradlow, The British Associations South African meeting. 125. SAAO Gills Society files. 126. TAB GOV 624 PS 12/04, Gill, Steps taken to obtain a Charter of Incorporation, n.d. 127. KAB PMO 224 1423/06. 128. Phillips, University of Cape Town, 2. 129. Dubow (ed.), Science in Society, 74. 130. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 193194. 131. Flint and Gilchrist (eds), Science in South Africa, ixx. 132. KAB GH 35/221 220, Sprigg to Governor, Minute 1/541 of 22 October 1903. See also Application for the grant of a Charter and draft of Charter. 133. KAB GH 35/221 220, 21 January 1904. 134. 134. KAB GH 23/82 221, Petition 17 June 1904 signed by President Gilchrist and Secretary Pringuey. 135. KAB GH 23/82 221, Smartt to Governor, 18 June 1904. 136. KAB GH 23/82 221, E.S. Brock to Lyttelton, 20 June 1904 137. TAB CS 473 4375/04, Henry Bale, 26 July 1904; Milner to Lyttelton, 8 August 1904. .

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138. RSSAf, Caldecott et al. to Privy Council, 3 December 1904. 139. RSSAf, Caldecott et al. to Privy Council, 3 December 1904. 140. See also RSSAf file: Correspondence Royal Charter, Gill: Steps taken to obtain a charter of incorporation, 6 March 1905. This file contains much of the material that is lodged also in the South African National Archives. 141. KAB GH 35/221 220, Reunert, 23 November 1904. 142. SAAO, Gill to Huggins, 23 November 1904. 143. TAB GOV 642 PS12/04, 7 December 1904. Milner was made an Honorary Member of the South African Philosophical Society in October 1905; see RSSAf Council 10 July 1905. 144. TAB GOV 802 PS5/7/05, Gill to Milner, 11 March 1905. 145. TAB GOV 802 PS5/7/05, Sclater to Selborne, 17 April 1905. 146. SAAO, Gilchrist to Cullen, 31 October 1905; see also RSSAf file: Correspondence Royal Charter. 147. RSSAf: Correspondence Royal Charter, Gill: Steps taken to obtain a charter of incorporation, 6 March 1905. 148. KAB GH 35/221 220, Transvaal Societies to Privy Council, 5 Feb 1906. 149. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society, 1718:iii. 150. KAB GH 35/221 220, Transvaal Societies to Privy Council, 5 Feb 1906. At a special meeting on 10 September 1906 these provisional Statutes were approved by the South African Philosophical Society, Transactions of the south African Philosophical Society, 19071909, 1718: iii. 151. KAB GH 35/221 220, Pringuey to Prime Minister, 25 September 1906. 152. KAB GH 35/221 220, Smartt, 4 October 1906. 153. KAB GH 35/221 220, 5 November 1906. 154. TAB GOV 642 PS12/04, 5 December 1906 155. KAB GH 23/102 45, Pringuey to Prime Minister, 4 February 1907; Hely-Hutchinson to Secretary of State, 11 February 1907. 156. KAB GH 23/104 119, 23 April 1907. 157. KAB GH 23/107 207, 17 July 1907. 158. KAB GH 35/221 220, Elgin to Hely-Hutchinson, 23 November 1907. 159. KAB T 1083 5172, Secretary to the Prime Minister to Assistant Treasurer, 17 December 1907. 160. KAB GH 35/221 220, GH 23/113 31 24; GH 23/113 31; Elgin to Hely-Hutchinson, 31 January 1908. 161. UCT BC478, Statutes of the Royal Society of South Africa. 162. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 154. 163. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 162. 164. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 19081910 1: 1 RSSAf Minutes of 27 April 1908 165. RSSAf Council 17 October 1990; Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 25:i. 166. RSSAf Council 18 October 1967. 167. RSSAf Council 23 May 1913. 168. RSSAf Nabarro, The aims and future of the Royal Society of South Africa: A discussion paper. 169. RSSAf Council 21 June 1973. 170. RSSAf Council 28 March 1924. 171. RSSAf Council 26 February 1970. 172. RSSAf Council 7 November 1969. One suspects that in the fraught circumstances of obtaining the Charter the issue of the coat-ofarms would only have led to further divisions among the scientific community. 173. RSSAf Council Report on meeting with Pama 16 April 1970. 174. RSSAf Council 3 May 1972. 175. RSSAf Council 2 November 1975. 176. RSSAf Council 16 June 1977. 177. RSSAf Council 30 Nov 1977. 178. RSSAf Council 8 Feb 1978; 14 June 1978; see also SAB HER 1079 GK/GN 1788 H4/3/1/2541. 179. Phillips, University of Cape Town, 183184. 180. RSSAf Council 9 March 1977. 181. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society, 1882 3: lvii. 182. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 19081910 1: 4546. 183. Davenport and Saunders, South Africa, 261. 184. SAB BNS 1/1/274 371/73 Correspondence 22 November 1946 to 1 May 1950. 185. RSSAf Council 7 September 1962. 186. RSSAf Council 7 December 1962.

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187. RSSAf Council 6 March 1963. 188. RSSAf Council 19 August 1963. 189. RSSAf Council 4 March 1964. 190. RSSAf Council 18 June 1964. 191. RSSAf Council 1 August 1986. 192. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 42, 1977: 221. 193. I thank Ian Glass for pointing out that the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Dublin Society and the Royal Hibernian Academy have also faced this issue and retained the Royal. 194. RSSAf Council 14 October 1975. 195. RSSAf Council 7 December 1982. 196. SAB UOD 712 E18/1 Hough to Prime Minister 19 July 1910 197. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 3, 1910: 419420. 198. RSSAf Council 11 December 1918. 199. SAB BIS 8 S9/2 Correspondence 23 May12 October 1917. 200. Williams, The Lord Porter of Luddenham Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149: 108110. 201. SAB UOD 775 E23/10 for full correspondence in this regard. 202. RSSAf File: Research Grants 19111920. 203. RSSAf The aims and future of the Royal Society of South Africa, 19 July 1987. 204. http://www.science.org.au/academy/academy/htm (31 July 2007). 205. http://www.rsc.ca (31 July 2007). 206. RSSAf, Anniversary address by the President, Supplement to Royal Society News 5(12) 1990: 1. 207. RSSAf Council 3 May 1912. 208. SAB UOD MISC 6.

209. RSSAf Council 18 June 1964. 210. Cape Monthly Magazine, 7, 1860: 130. 211. RSSAf, Nabarro, The aims the future of the Royal Society of South Africa: A discussion paper, 19 July 1987. 212. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 48(2), 1993. 213. See L. Robin & W Steffen, History for the Anthropocene, History Compass 5(2007) http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/hico/0/0 214. Haughton, Co-operation in science and technology in Africa south of the Sahara, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 35(1) 1959: 110. 215. Rapson, Science and the future of the mining and mineral industries, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 37(3) 1965. 216. Naud, The development of scientific policy in South Africa, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 36(2) 1961: 6169. 217. Sutton, An international view of the present and future of science, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 43(3) 1978: 267282. 218. Sloan, The nature of science, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 44(1) 1979; Gevers, The art of the insoluble, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 47(2) 1989; Ramphele, Science and transformation in South Africa, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 52(2) 1997. 219. RSSAf, Editorial policy and procedures, 31 July 1972. 220. RSSAf Editor Position Paper, 10 August 1987. 221. I am grateful to Professor Tobias for informing me about these events. 222. Williams, The Lord Porter of Luddenham, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149: 108110