Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh

The Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh was a now defunct learned society which was based in Edinburgh, Scotland "for the cultivation of the physical sciences".

The society was founded in 1771 as the Physico-Chirurgical Society but soon after changed its name to the Physical Society. After being granted a Royal Charter in 1778 it became the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh.

It absorbed a number of other societies over the next fifty years, including the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1782 (not to be confused with the modern Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, founded in 1821), the American Physical Society in 1796 (not to be confused with the modern American Physical Society, founded in 1899), the Hibernian Medical Society in 1799, the Chemical Society in 1803, the Natural History Society in 1812 and the Didactic Society in 1813.

The society occupied a lecture hall in Nicholson Street, Edinburgh complete with library. It published a regular journal, Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, between 1854 and 1965 devoted to articles on experimental biology and natural history.

Members of the society were known as Fellows and permitted to use the postnomial FRPSE. Presidents were elected at intervals, sometimes more than one for each year.

Some of the records of the Society (1828-1884) are now managed by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

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