The UK’s Royal Society has announced that historic manuscripts by scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin and others will be published online for the first time. As part of celebrations to mark its 350th anniversary, the society will make original manuscripts of papers published in its journals available to the public via Trailblazing, a new online resource.
Trailblazing contains 60 articles chosen from among the 60,000 that have appeared in the Royal Society's journals. Among the highlights from the Trailblazing site are: a 1770 scientific study confirming that composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a genius and, more recently, acclaimed British scientist Stephen Hawking's early writings on black holes. Also included are Sir Isaac Newton's landmark research on light and colour, a gruesome account of a 17th century blood transfusion and Benjamin Franklin's famous kite-flying experiment to identify the electrical nature of lightning in 1752.
The Royal Society hopes that the new interactive site will inspire members of the public to see science as part of everyday life and culture. According to Royal Society president Lord Martin Rees, the scientific papers on Trailblazing represent a ceaseless quest by scientists over the centuries, many of them Fellows of the Royal Society, to test and build on the knowledge of humankind and the universe.
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