We returned to the West End and Mayfair and St James’s for September’s tour. Having focused on musicians and the gentlemen’s wardrobe on earlier tours, this time it was the turn of the scientists and the institutions they formed to further scientific endeavour.
We started at Benjamin Franklin’s house, never one to shy away from being a guinea pig in his own experiments with electricity and responsible for some of its lexicon we still use today. Then to Trafalgar Square where it’s still possible to see the fruits of the labours of Royal Astronomer George Airy – the official Imperial Measurements for a foot, a yard, a chain and a rod. On to Waterloo Place and the heroine of the Crimean War, renowned nurse and one of the first epidemiologists, Florence Nightingale.
Next to the current home of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific institution in the world, via a London home of one of, if not, the greatest scientist ever, Sir Isaac Newton. As with many of his ilk, a brilliant scientist yet a curious individual in a number of respects, not least for poking bodkins in his eye to see what would happen. We finished with a gathering of institutions in the courtyard of Burlington House, including the Linnaen Society, which holds the archives of Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, before finishing at the Royal Institution on Albemarle Street, where no fewer than 10 chemical elements have been discovered.
Organised by Tim Murphy