The Royal Society

The Royal Society

Founded in 1660 and granted its first charter by King Charles II in 1662, the Royal Society emerged from an informal group of natural philosophers meeting at Gresham College. Its original wealth built on member subscriptions, book sales, and a series of parliamentary grants meant to fund voyages and experiments. Today the organization operates from a Nash-designed terrace overlooking The Mall, managing an endowment that supports UK and Commonwealth science through a mix of investment returns, publishing income from ten peer-reviewed journals, and an annual government grant-in-aid administered by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The Society allocates its spend across a grant-making engine that funds roughly 1,600 active research projects at any time. Its University Research Fellowships place early-career scientists at UK institutions for five-to-eight-year terms, while the Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships target researchers requiring flexible working patterns. Industry Fellowships pair academic scientists with companies — past hosts include GSK and Rolls-Royce — and the Royal Society Enterprise Fund, a separate vehicle, has made direct venture commitments into spinouts including Cambridge-based quantum computing firm Riverlane (per the firm). International programs extend to joint projects with the African Academy of Sciences and bilateral exchanges across Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region. The Society's Publishing division runs a portfolio of journals including Philosophical Transactions, the world's oldest continuously published scientific journal, which first appeared in 1665. The Library and Archives, stored on site in London and in rural storage facilities, house around 1,500 manuscript volumes dating to the 12th century. The Fellowship, capped at roughly 1,600 living scientists, receives up to 73 new Members and 24 Foreign Members elected each year, creating an institutional network that routinely surfaces companies such as DeepMind — founded by Fellows Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg, both elected in 2018 (public record). May 2024: The Society awarded its Royal Medal to six researchers spanning artificial intelligence, molecular biology and climate science, reinforcing its grant focus on frontier fields. Its structural differentiator is a governance model where the grant-selection panels are staffed by practicing scientists, not professional allocators. This peer-review architecture means the Society does not take equity, seek returns or recycle capital the way a modern endowment or venture fund would. Instead, it functions as a perpetual, loss-tolerant funder of individuals, embedding an unusual tilt toward high-risk, non-commercial inquiry — a posture that has funded 23 Nobel laureates before they won their prizes and made the FRS designation a signal that venture investors and university tech-transfer offices routinely track.