| Description | Printed minutes containing matters laid before Council, the Royal Society's governing body of Fellows, with records of decisions taken.
Commencing with a list of Council members present: Samuel Hunter Christie; Dr Charles Daubeny; Reverend George Peacock, Dean of Ely; Thomas Galloway; William Robert Grove; Leonard Horner; Sir John William Lubbock; Peter Mark Roget; Dr. John Forbes Royle; Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Sabine; Dr. William Sharpey; Captain William Henry Smyth; Isaac Taylor; Charles Wheatstone; Reverend Robert Willis; the President, Spencer Joshua Alwyn Compton, 2nd Marquess of Northampton, in the chair.
Among matters discussed or noted: minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed. Award of medals: Copley Medal to M. Urban Le Verrier for his prediction of a new planet; the Rumford Medal to Michael Faraday for discoveries in his 19th series of experimental researches in electricity; a Royal Medal to Michael Faraday for papers including his 20th and 21st series of experimental researches in electricity. Resolution from the Committee of Geology that no geological or mineralogical paper was considered important enough for the award of a Royal Medal. Resolved that other Scientific Committees be asked to recommend for the award of a second Royal Medal. List of President, Officers and Members of Council to be recommended for election in the ensuing year at the Anniversary Meeting. List of salaries ordered to be paid to Officers and Staff. Letter from G.J. Pennington, Treasury Chambers, 16 September 1846, to the President of the Royal Society, full text entered into the minutes: noting the request to subsidise the expense of publishing Edward Sabine's papers on Philosophical Transactions and offering £274 7s. for the purpose, accepted. Letter from Sir John Frederick William Herschel, Collingwood, 28 September 1846, to the Marquess of Northampton, full text entered into the minutes: Professor Encke has requested on behalf of Professor Gerhardt of Berlin for permission to obtain copies of Leibnitz's letters at the Royal Society for publication, the copies to be made by a fitting person; granted, on condition that the President approve the copyist. Mr. De Morgan applied for the loan of one of the first editions of Newton's Commercium Epistolicum, granted. Moved that discussion of the Charter Committee report be adjourned, denied. Resolved that Council approved of the Charter Committee's recommendations on the election of 15 Fellows per year and that the most eligible should be recommended by Council to the Fellows; resolved that the Charter Committee is renewed to draft a case for counsel on whether the recommendation could be enacted by statute. |