LATEST ROYAL MAIL ISSUE...
Royal Mail will issue an eye-catching set of 10 stamps on February 25 to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, the national academy of science for the UK and Commonwealth.
Split designs feature 10 luminaries of the Society, whose portraits are paired with imagery representing their achievements.
The Society is the world's oldest academy of its type in continuous existence. Those who have been elected Fellows are the pre-eminent scientists of their day.
The Royal Society itself suggested selecting one Fellow from each 35-year block of its 350-year history, and Royal Mail decided to include citizens of the British Empire, so American Benjamin Franklin and New Zealander Ernest Rutherford make the cut.
The scientific work of five of them has been alluded to before on British stamps (see page 90), but six of them are actually depicted for the first time.
The 'brainstorm' design was the idea of Hat-trick Design, who also came up with the 'jigsaw' format for last year's Darwin stamps.
1st class ROBERT BOYLE (CHEMISTRY)
Considered one of the founders of modern chemistry, Irish-born Boyle (1627-1691) is probably best known for Boyle's Law. Essentially this says that, at a constant temperature, the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to its pressure. |
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1st class SIR ISAAC NEWTON (OPTICS)
Newton (1643-1727) is best known for the laws of motion which governed physicists' thinking for 300 years. In the field of optics he built the first practical reflecting telescope, and developed a theory of colour by observing how a prism split white light into a spectrum. |
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1st class BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (ELECTRICITY)
American polymath Franklin (1706-90) is credited with inventing the lightning rod and describing how an electrical charge has positive and negative elements. |
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1st class CHARLES BABBAGE (COMPUTING)
Babbage (1791-1871) invented the 'difference engine' for making basic calculations. Although he did not build a fully functioning machine, his plans are seen as the first blueprint for a programmable computer. |
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1st class ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE (EVOLUTION)
Wallace (1823-1913) was a naturalist who explored Brazil and Malaya extensively, noting differences in species. He is considered the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection, as his matching views propelled Charles Darwin to rush through the publication of On The Origin Of Species. |
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1st class SIR JOSEPH LISTER (ANTISEPTIC SURGERY)
Lister (1827-1912) was the surgeon who discovered that carbolic acid could be used to sterilise wounds and instruments, reducing the risk of septic infection and making surgery more survivable. |
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1st class ERNEST RUTHERFORD (ATOMIC STRUCTURE)
Rutherford (1871-1937) is considered the father of nuclear physics. He worked out that an atom comprised a neutron surrounded by electrons, and is widely credited as the first man to split an atom in 1917. |
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1st class DOROTHY HODGKIN (CRYSTALLOGRAPHY)
Hodgkin (1910-1994) developed X-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structures of biomolecules. She used it to decode the construction of vitamin B12, penicillin and insulin. |
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1st class SIR NICHOLAS SHACKLETON (EARTH SCIENCE)
A great-nephew of the explorer, Ernest, Shackleton (1937-2006) was a geologist and climatatologist who helped to clarify the rates and mechanism of changes in the Earth's orbit, magnetic field and climate. |
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OTHER PRODUCTS
A prestige stamp book contains three panes of Royal Society stamps (including two each of the Jenner and Rutherford designs) and a mixed pane of 4 x 54p and 4 x 22p Machins.
Stamp cards, a first day cover, a presentation pack and a medal cover have also been produced.
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