In 2019 we celebrated our 200th year with a programme of special events in and around Cambridge.

These included the 'Discovery: 200 Years of the Cambridge Philosophical Society' exhibition at the Cambridge University Library (8 March - 31 August, 2019), which featured rarely seen archive material and items from the Society’s fascinating history, which helped turn Cambridge from a scientific backwater into the world-famous centre for research it is today.

Our bicentenary year also saw the publication of The Spirit of Inquiry, a new book on the Society’s history by respected Cambridge author Susannah Gibson, which explores how our extraordinary society helped shape modern science.

We also held a themed two-day meeting entitled “The Futures of Sciences”. Both the exhibition and the two-day meeting were free and open to all – as is our whole programme of lectures.

Photo: The Cambridge Philosophical Society Seal, bearing an image of Newton, 1832

Photo: Cambridge Philosophical Society Blue Plaque at 17 All Saints Passage, Cambridge.

Discovery: 200 Years of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, which runs from March 8-August 31, 2019 at Cambridge University Library, charts two centuries of the Society’s key role in some of the most significant scientific advances of the day, including Darwin’s theory of evolution, Cambridge’s first Nobel Prize winner Lord Rayleigh’s seminal work on waves, and the birth of ‘Big Data’ experiments from the 19th century.

Communicating Discovery

Discovery: 200 Years of the Cambridge Philosophical Society

Photo: Jim Woodhouse

Anthropometry Cards

Discovery: 200 Years of the Cambridge Philosophical Society

Photo: Jim Woodhouse

Shaping Discovery

Geological and fossil samples collected by Adam Sedgwick in 1819

Photo: Jim Woodhouse

Discovering a Science of Man

Discovery: 200 Years of the Cambridge Philosophical Society

Photo: Jim Woodhouse

The Tools of Discovery

Unifying the sciences through mathematics

Photo: Jim Woodhouse

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