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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, or Phil. Trans., is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society.
Begun in 1665, it is the oldest scientific journal printed in the English-speaking world and the second oldest in the world, after the French Journal des sçavans. It is still published, making it the world's longest running scientific journal. The use of the word "philosophical" in the title derives from the phrase "natural philosophy", which was the equivalent of what we would now generically call "science".
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The first issue was published by Henry Oldenburg in 1665, six years after the Royal Society had been founded. Over the centuries, many important scientific discoveries have been published in the Philosophical Transactions. Famous contributing authors include Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin. In 1672, the journal published Newton's first paper New Theory about Light and Colours, which can be seen as the beginning of his scientific career.
In 1887 the journal expanded to two separate publications, one serving the Physical Sciences: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Physical, Mathematical and Engineering Sciences and the other focusing on the life sciences: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Both journals now publish themed issues, and individual research articles are published in the sister journals Proceedings of the Royal Society.
All post-1997 content older than 12 months is available free online.
Phil. Trans. A:
All theme issues can be accessed here.