Membership of the Philosophical Society is open to graduates of the University of Cambridge, and graduates of other universities who at the time of application are resident in or near Cambridge. Members are also known as Fellows. In order to be elected a Fellow of the Society, a person must be recommended by a proposer, who must have been a Fellow for at least three years, and by a supporter who knows the candidate in a professional capacity. The supporter is to be a person of appropriate standing (e.g. academic staff member in the place of work of the applicant). They do not have to be a member of the society, but must know the applicant personally. Approved candidates are elected at open meetings of the Society following proposal at Council Meetings.
Completed membership application forms should be submitted with electronic signatures by a .pdf attachment to the Society’s email at philosoc@group.cam.ac.uk. The proposer and the supporter must be included as copy recipients in the email when submitting your membership application form to validate their signatures.Please note that your membership of the Society will commence the date you pay your first subscription of £20.
Subscriptions can be paid by a bank transfer to the Society's bank account, (please refer to the Subscription form below for bank details), cheque or standing order. If paying by bank transfer, please send an email to philosoc@group.cam.ac.uk to confirm when you have paid and the reference you have used (ie surname or your CSRid), this will enable us to trace your payment on our bank statement.
Fellows pay an annual subscription of £20, due in advance on 1 January each year. If you are elected in the Michaelmas Term, in any year, you will not be required to pay the subscription which became due on the preceding 1 January. A Fellow, or Fellow-elect, may compound for all annual subscriptions with a single payment of £150. A Fellow of ten years' standing may compound for all future annual subscriptions with a single payment of £100.
A Fellow may choose to receive either Mathematical Proceedings or Biological Reviews, currently £30 for Mathematical Proceedings and £15 per annum for Biological Reviews. If a Fellow is a registered Postgraduate Student, resident in Cambridge on 1 January of any year, there is no additional charge, for that year, for whichever of our journals is deemed relevant by their Supervisor. In these cases, the journal will be delivered to their College or Department for Mathematical Proceedings and by online access for Biological Reviews by request to the Executive Secretary.
A Fellow who has reached the aged of 67 and has been a Fellow for 25 years may request the Council to remit future subscriptions. Any Fellow wishing to take advantage of this bye-law should contact the Executive Secretary.
Application Form
Subscription Form
From Darwin’s paper on evolution to the development of stem cell research, publications from the Society continue to shape the scientific landscape.
Mathematical Proceedings is one of the few high-quality journals publishing original research papers that cover the whole range of pure and applied mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics.
Biological Reviews covers the entire range of the biological sciences, presenting several review articles per issue. Although scholarly and with extensive bibliographies, the articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists as well as researchers in the field.
The Spirit of Inquiry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the remarkable Cambridge Philosophical Society and brings to life the many remarkable episodes and illustrious figures associated with the Society, including Adam Sedgwick, Mary Somerville, Charles Darwin, and Lawrence Bragg.
Become a Fellow of the Society and enjoy the benefits that membership brings. Membership costs £20 per year.
Show All
Dementia is a topic of considerable public interest. How empirical evidence has contributed to this societal awareness and indeed fear will be covered in this talk. It will span research from the 1980s when not much was understood about dementia up to contemporary perspectives. The focus will be on the epidemiological and public health evidence base, and how this relates to the results published from clinical and lab based research. The findings from UK and other high income countries of reduced age specific prevalence (%) will be explored, and the implications of results from brain based studies that dementia is not inevitable in the presence of ‘alzheimer’ type changes. The role of inequalities, risk varying across countries and time and our knowledge about protective factors have strengthened during recent years, and the balance of high risk with whole population approaches to reducing risk for society will be considered.
Registered address:17 Mill LaneCambridgeCB2 1RXUnited Kingdom
Business address:6A King's ParadeCambridgeCB2 1SJUnited Kingdom
Office hours at the business address:Monday and Thursday: 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm.
Please contact philosoc@group.cam.ac.uk to agree a timing before visiting the office.