Geological Society of London

Fellows are entitled to the postnominal FGS (Fellow of the Geological Society), over 2,000 of whom are Chartered Geologists (CGeol). The Society is a registered charity, no. 210161 . It is also a member of the Science Council, and is licensed to award Chartered Scientist to qualifying members.

The mission of the society is: "Making geologists acquainted with each other, stimulating their zeal, inducing them to adopt one nomenclature, facilitating the communication of new facts and ascertaining what is known in their science and what remains to be discovered".

History

The Society was founded on 13 November 1807 at the Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street, in the Covent Garden district of London. It was partly the outcome of a previous club known as the Askesian Society. There were 13 founder members: William Babington, James Parkinson, Humphry Davy, George Bellas Greenough, Arthur Aikin, William Allen, Jacques Louis, Comte de Bournon, Richard Knight, James Laird, James Franck, William Haseldine Pepys, Richard Phillips, and William Phillips. It received its royal charter on 23 April 1825 from George IV.

Since 1874, the Society has been based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. This building houses the Society's library, which contains more than 300,000 volumes of books and journals. It is a member of the UK Science Council.

In 1907 a decision was made by the Society to admit women as Associates, under the condition they distinguished themselves as geological investigators or submitted their own original research. Women were first allowed to become Fellows of the Society in 1919. Margaret Crosfield became the first, due to alphabetical primacy, of the first eight women to be elected Fellows of the Society, on 21 May 1919.

In 1991, the Society merged with the Institution of Geologists, which had been formed in 1977 to represent the geological profession.

The Society is a member of the European Federation of Geologists.

The Society celebrated its bicentenary in 2007. It ran programmes in the geosciences in Britain and abroad, under the auspices of the science writer and palaeontologist Professor Richard Fortey, the president that year.