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Country
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GB
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Language of name of institution
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eng
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Contact information: postal address
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6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG
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Contact information: phone number
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0044 2074512500
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Contact information: email
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library@royalsociety.org
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Reference number
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L&P
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Type of reference number
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Archival reference number
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Title (official language of the state)
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Letters and Papers of a scientific nature submitted for publication by the Royal Society
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Language of title
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eng
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Creator / accumulator
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The Royal Society
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Date(s)
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1741/1806
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Language(s)
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eng
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Extent
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119 volumes and 2 boxes
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Scope and content
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This series comprises scientific papers sent to the Royal Society, many of which were published in the Philosophical Transactions. The earlier papers contain larger numbers of short letters, but by the 19th century, most of the manuscripts are in the form of long monographs. The texts are supported by a large number of original illustrations throughout the series. This collection provides a virtually unbroken run of presentations by leading 18th-century scientists. The few gaps include 1746-49 when no papers were collected.
Some of these letters and papers were written by or addressed to Sephardic Jews who were Fellows of the Royal Society, namely Jacob de Castro Sarmento, Emanuel Mendes da Costa, and Joseph Salvador. Some examples are the following:
L&P/2/7/1: Letter regarding spars and diamonds found in the Cornish mines from William Borlase to Emanuel Mendes da Costa. December 18, 1749.
L&P/2/103: Paper "Of an iliac passion from palsy of the large intestine" by Jacob de Castro Sarmento, read on February 21, 1751.
L&P/2/310: Letter on the lava of Mount Vesuvius from Emanuel Mendes da Costa to Thomas Birch. June 4, 1752. Other letters from, to, or addressed to Emanuel Mendes da Costa on scientific matters are L&P/2/377, L&P/4/194, L&P/4/138, L&P/4/54, L&P/3/243/1, L&P/4/223, L&P/4/76, L&P/4/146, L&P/4/181, L&P/4/280, among others.
L&P/3/41: Paper "Of a lunar eclipse" by Jacob de Castro Sarmento, read on November 20, 1755.
L&P/3/386: Letter "Cure of paralysis by electricity" by John Godfrey Teske to Jacob de Castro Sarmento, read on May 17, 1759.
L&P/4/63: Letter regarding an uncommon meteorological phenomenon in Dorsetshire from John Stevens to Emanuel Mendes da Costa. April 4, 1761.
L&P/4/71: Letter from an unknown author to Joseph Salvador regarding the earthquake at Lisbon on March 31, 1761, read to the Royal Society on April 23, 1761.
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Archival history
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This series is a combination and continuation of the Early Letters and Classified Papers series into the 19th century. Later, the series was divided into the Philosophical Transactions series for those papers that were published and Archived Papers for those that were not published at the time. From the time that the Letters and Papers (or New Guard Books as they were originally known) were created, none of these original papers was copied into Letter or Register Books.
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(source: The Royal Society online catalogue)
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Administrative / Biographical history
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The Royal Society is the oldest national scientific society in the world and the leading British organisation for the promotion of scientific research. It originated on November 28, 1660, when 12 men met after a lecture at Gresham College, London, by Christopher Wren (1632-1723), then professor of astronomy at the college, and resolved to set up a college for the promoting of "Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning". Those present included the scientists Robert Boyle (1627-91) and Bishop John Wilkins (1614-72) and the courtiers Sir Robert Moray (1609-73) and William, 2nd Viscount Brouncker (1620-84).
This group's ambition to create a national society devoted to the promotion of science was put into effect over the next few years, particularly through a charter of incorporation granted by Charles II in 1662 and revised in 1663. The royal charter provided an institutional structure for the society, with a president, treasurer, secretaries, and council. Though it had royal patronage almost from the start, the society has always remained a voluntary organisation, independent of the British state.
A key development of the Royal Society was the establishment in 1665 of a periodical that acted as the society's mouthpiece, the Philosophical Transactions, which still flourishes today as the oldest scientific journal in continuous publication.
The presidency of Isaac Newton from 1703 to 1727 saw this great mathematician and physicist asserting the society's dominant role in science in Britain and farther afield. Endowments from the 18th century onward made possible prizes for various aspects of science that are still awarded today. In the 1830s, a reform program reinvigorated the society and restored it to a prominence that it has retained ever since.
Since 1967, the society has occupied premises in Carlton House Terrace, London, where meetings are held, and the society's extensive archival and other resources are housed.
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(source: Hunter, Michael. "Royal Society" in Britannica)
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System of arrangement
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The series is arranged into "Decades", these are groups that originally consisted of ten volumes rather than ten years, with supplementary volumes interspersed with these sets. Twelve such decades form the whole series, originally 126 volumes, are now bound as 119. There is also a supplementary box of loose papers. The item numbers run consecutively for the entirety of each decade, rather than each volume. The items are arranged broadly chronologically by the date of the Royal Society meeting at which they were read, but there are significant inconsistencies in the chronology within certain volumes.
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(source: The Royal Society online catalogue)
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Access, restrictions
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The Letters and Papers have been filmed with funding from the Mellon Foundation. The microfilm is available to researchers in the Library.
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Author of the description
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Carla Vieira, 2022
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Bibliography
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Barnett, Richard D. 1978. “Dr Jacob de Castro Sarmento and Sephardim in Medical Practice in 18th-Century London.” Transactions & Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England) 27: 84–114.
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Cantor, Geoffrey. 2001. “The Rise and Fall of Emanuel Mendes Da Costa: A Severe Case of ‘The Philosophical Dropsy’?” The English Historical Review 116 (467): 584–603. https://www.jstor.org/stable/579811.
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Hayward, Rhodri. 2003. “Emmanuel Mendes Da Costa (1717–1791). A Case Study in Scientific Reputation.” In Travels of Learning: A Geography of Science in Europe, edited by Ana Simões, Ana Carneiro, and Maria Paula Diogo, 101–14. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, v. 233. Dordrecht ; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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Pinto, Hélio de Jesus Ferreira de Oliveira. 2015. “Jacob de Castro Sarmento e o Conhecimento Médico e Científico do século XVIII.” PhD thesis, Lisbon: Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. https://run.unl.pt/handle/10362/15795.
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Rousseau, G. S., and David Haycock. 2000. “The Jew of Crane Court: Emanuel Mendes Da Costa (1717-91), Natural History and Natural Excess.” History of Science 28: 127–70.
