History
The Society was founded on October 13, 1807 at the Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street, Covent Garden. It was partly the outcome of a previous club known as the Askesian Society and records show that there were 13 founder members:William Babington, James Parkinson, Humphry Davy, George Bellas Greenough, Arthur Aikin, William Allen, Jacques Louis, Comte de Bournon, Richard Knight, James Laird, James Franck, William Haseldine Pepys, Richard Phillips and William Phillips. It received its Royal Charter on April 23 1825 from George IV.
Since 1874, the Society has been based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. This building houses the Society's library, which contains more than 300,000 volumes of books and journals. It is a member of the UK Science Council.
In 1991 it merged with the Institution of Geologists, which had been formed in 1977 to represent the geological profession.
The Society celebrated its bicentenary in 2007 with a number of programmes to raise the profile of the geosciences in Britain and abroad under the auspices of the well-known popular science writer and palaeontologist Professor Richard Fortey, the president that year.
Read more about this topic: Geological Society Of London
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