"The Society's foundation is its Fellowship, which is made up of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from the UK and the Commonwealth. Each year, the Fellows elect 44 new Fellows and eight new Foreign Members, chosen for their scientific achievements." That's what the Royal Society website says.
And it goes on, "The main criterion for election as a Fellow is scientific excellence." So there you have it. A scientific body which elects its fellows on the basis of significant scientific achievement. The Royal Society says "The election process for Fellows and Foreign Members is extremely rigorous and is based upon the established practice of peer review."
But it seems there has been some exceptions made. The Princess Royal and the Duke of Kent are already Fellows. Already the Duke of Edinburgh is a Fellow, and now his grandson Prince William is to be made a Fellow as well. What, we might ask, is their scientific achievement? Why on earth would an eminent scientific society pander to royalty by degrading the significance of a Fellowship of the Royal Society and allowing in people who, apart from being very rich, have no distinguishing characteristics at all.
The election of honorary fellows was supposed to be to be able to include those who "rendered signal service to the cause of science, or whose election would significantly benefit the Society by their great experience in other walks of life". But in this case, it's a throwback to the time in the seventeenth century when scientists were thin on the ground and in order to get any financial backing for scientific activity, you had to pander to the rich and famous.
The clause to elect honorary fellows enabled wealthy folk to parade around with FRS after their name. The category of Royal Fellows allowed direct pandering to royalty which persists to this day. Of course, it won't make any real difference to anything much. Prince William has not shown any "significant scientific achievement", indeed he's not personally involved in anything much to do with science. He's just a name.
But this is just another aspect of marketing, branding, and pumping up the Society's importance through the names it can list, rather than through the profoundly important scientific advances of its true Fellows. Does it really need to do this pandering? True, it is part of the long historical tradition of the Society and by pandering to the self-importance of royalty, it make funding a little more likely, so there's clearly an opportunist element to this act.
But doesn't it look cheap? The spirit of rationalism that pervades the real work of the Royal Society ought at the same time to point to the need to drop the archaic pandering to royalty and other wealthy people.
