Website Royal Society online

摘要

Those who think that scientists sometimes pose the wrong questions may be on to something. Spare a thought, for instance, for Reinhold Wolf and colleagues who asked "Can a fly ride a bicycle?" in 1992 (Phil Trans R Soc B Biol Sci). Such intriguing studies can now be accessed online alongside seminal papers from many eminent scientists, including Robert Boyle, Alexander Fleming, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and StephenHawking. The Royal Society Journals Digital Archive allows users to explore almost 350 years of publications by the Royal Society, starting with its first volume of Philosophical Transactions in 1665.The scanned pages of the original publications are a delight to read-Benjamin Franklin, for example, noted that electricity might "kill a man, as it before did the turkey", and James Watson and Francis Crick mused that "It seemed worthwhile for us to build models".The Royal Society's role in solving contemporary problems is also evident from these papers. In 1916, it collaborated with circus celebrities to train sea lions as submarine trackers to counter German U-boats. A recent letter by the Royal Society to position itself on the debate about climate change hardly seems as exciting.