Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 6 hours ago
1326th Ordinary General Meeting and Open Lecture of the Royal Society of NSW—2 October 2024
'Knowledge for a Nation: the RSNSW Origin Story'
Dr Anne Coote
Author and Historian
The presentation commences at 17:01
MC: Dr Susan Pond AM FRSN FTSE FAHMS, President, Royal Society of NSW
Timing Marks:
00:00:00 Introduction: Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, Governor of NSW
00:04:03 Book Launch: Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon, State Librarian, State Library of NSW
00:17:01 Author's Presentation: Dr Anne Coote
00:50:45 Audience Q&A: moderated by Emeritus Professor Peter Shergold AC FRSN FASSA
00:57:13 Reflections: Emeritus Professor Peter Shergold
01:11:29 Meeting Close
Summary: Knowledge for a Nation: Origins of the Royal Society of New South Wales tells the early history of a learned society still active in the intellectual culture of twenty-first century Australia. The book begins with an account of Australia’s first learned society, the Philosophical Society of Australasia (1821-1822), which is the Royal Society’s enduring inspiration, if not its earliest incarnation. The Royal Society evolved from the Australian Philosophical Society (1850-1), through the Philosophical Society of New South Wales, which was re-badged Royal in 1866. Successfully re-organised a decade later, the Royal Society reached the zenith of its influence on the development of a colonial science community in New South Wales. Hopes and disappointments, conflict and camaraderie, challenges and achievements are all part of this story which highlights the society’s initiatives in the cause of science, its all-male membership, the women who nevertheless contributed, and the society’s glittering conversaziones. The book concludes in 1914, when a visit to Australia by the British Association for the Advancement of Science demonstrated international recognition for the colonial scientific community which the Royal Society had worked so long to help create.
Historian Dr Anne Coote works in the areas of public history and cultural history, including the cultural history of science in colonial Australia. For many years, she held an adjunct position at the University of New England. More recently, as an associate of the Centre for Applied History at Macquarie University, she contributed to a research project investigating the history of shale-mining settlements in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales. She has written entries for the Dictionary of Sydney and published academically on the influence of literate culture on popular perceptions of community and sovereignty in mid nineteenth-century New South Wales; popular science journalism; notable collectors of natural history specimens; the intersection of specimen collection with ideas about class; and the trade in specimens at a local and global level. Dr Coote is a graduate of the University of Sydney and the University of New England, Armidale.
1326th Ordinary General Meeting and Open Lecture of the Royal Society of NSW—2 October 2024
'Knowledge for a Nation: the RSNSW Origin Story'
Dr Anne Coote
Author and Historian
The presentation commences at 17:01
MC: Dr Susan Pond AM FRSN FTSE FAHMS, President, Royal Society of NSW
Timing Marks:
00:00:00 Introduction: Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, Governor of NSW
00:04:03 Book Launch: Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon, State Librarian, State Library of NSW
00:17:01 Author's Presentation: Dr Anne Coote
00:50:45 Audience Q&A: moderated by Emeritus Professor Peter Shergold AC FRSN FASSA
00:57:13 Reflections: Emeritus Professor Peter Shergold
01:11:29 Meeting Close
Summary: Knowledge for a Nation: Origins of the Royal Society of New South Wales tells the early history of a learned society still active in the intellectual culture of twenty-first century Australia. The book begins with an account of Australia’s first learned society, the Philosophical Society of Australasia (1821-1822), which is the Royal Society’s enduring inspiration, if not its earliest incarnation. The Royal Society evolved from the Australian Philosophical Society (1850-1), through the Philosophical Society of New South Wales, which was re-badged Royal in 1866. Successfully re-organised a decade later, the Royal Society reached the zenith of its influence on the development of a colonial science community in New South Wales. Hopes and disappointments, conflict and camaraderie, challenges and achievements are all part of this story which highlights the society’s initiatives in the cause of science, its all-male membership, the women who nevertheless contributed, and the society’s glittering conversaziones. The book concludes in 1914, when a visit to Australia by the British Association for the Advancement of Science demonstrated international recognition for the colonial scientific community which the Royal Society had worked so long to help create.
Historian Dr Anne Coote works in the areas of public history and cultural history, including the cultural history of science in colonial Australia. For many years, she held an adjunct position at the University of New England. More recently, as an associate of the Centre for Applied History at Macquarie University, she contributed to a research project investigating the history of shale-mining settlements in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales. She has written entries for the Dictionary of Sydney and published academically on the influence of literate culture on popular perceptions of community and sovereignty in mid nineteenth-century New South Wales; popular science journalism; notable collectors of natural history specimens; the intersection of specimen collection with ideas about class; and the trade in specimens at a local and global level. Dr Coote is a graduate of the University of Sydney and the University of New England, Armidale.
