Royal Society places archives online

London: Isaac Newton held a clear glass prism to the sunbeam that penetrated the shutters of his darkened room and watched in awe as the wall of his office danced with all the colours of the rainbow.

The 28-year-old physicist at Trinity College, Cambridge, was the first to show that white light is a blend of primary colours, a discovery that explains why grass is green and the sky is blue.

His written account of the experiment in 1671 is among the oldest in a collection of scientific milestones described in Letters to the Royal Society, which were made public on Monday to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Britain's academy of science.

The documents are released through an online library project called Trailblazing, a name inspired by Newton's famous nod to the work of his predecessors in a note to his rival Robert Hooke: "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

The letters to the society record the march of science from the earliest blood transfusions, and attempts to capture lightning, to the confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity, the discovery of DNA and Stephen Hawking's first musings on black holes.

The letters reveal a history of failure eclipsed by success, and the maturing of science from a haphazard amateur pursuit to the systematised professionalism of today.

"At that time the only scientists who were in any sense professionals were astronomers and maybe medical doctors, and of the two, the astronomers were the only ones who probably did more good than harm," said Professor Martin Rees, the astronomer royal and president of the society.

"If you look at these records, you can't help but notice the immense range of interests they had. They were motivated by curiosity."

There is the letter from the chemist Robert Boyle, asking the physician Richard Lower about the consequences of transfusing blood from one animal into another. Does a dog lose its quirks after transfusion and gain those of the donor?

Does blood from a big dog make a small dog grow? Can you safely replace a frog's blood with blood from a calf, and might that change one species into another? The answers were no, no, no and no. 

A letter from Benjamin Franklin from 1752 dispels the myth that lightning is a supernatural force. 

In 1769, the English naturalist Daines Barrington wrote to the society after a barrage of tests confirmed that Mozart was indeed a child genius. Barrington visited the eight-year-old at his parents' home, and asked him to play scores he had never seen and to compose on the spot.

"His execution was amazing, considering his little fingers could scarcely reach a 5th on the harpsichord," Barrington wrote on hearing one recital.

He vouched for Mozart's age, by confirming birth certificate detail and documenting his behaviour.

"Whilst he was playing to me, a favourite cat came in, upon which he immediately left his harpsichord, nor could we bring him back for a considerable time," he wrote. "He would also sometimes run about the room with a stick between his legs by way of horse."

Clashes

Scientific progress brought inevitable clashes with scripture. The fossilised remains of elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses in Kirkdale, Yorkshire, were not washed there by a biblical flood, but showed life on Earth had existed for millions of years, noted the Reverend William Buckland in 1822.

To mark the anniversary, the society is calling leading researchers together to thrash out the biggest issues for modern science.

Feeding the world and providing clean, green energy will doubtless feature, as will more basic questions on the nature of ageing and consciousness.