The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society, was established, according to its Royal Charter of 11 August 1824, to further 'the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia.' From its incorporation the society has been a forum, through lectures, its journal, and other publications, for scholarship relating to Asian culture and society of the highest level. It is the the United Kingdom's senior learned society in the field of Asian studies
Josiah Forshall was born at Witney, Oxfordshire, the eldest son of Samuel Forshall. He received education at the grammar schools of Exeter and Chester, and in 1814 entered Exeter College, Oxford. He graduated BA in 1818, taking a first class in mathematics and a second in literae humaniores. He became MA in 1821, and was elected fellow and tutor of his college.
Forshall was appointed an assistant librarian in the manuscript department of the British Museum in 1824, and became keeper of that department in 1827. In 1828 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1828 Forshall was appointed secretary to the Museum, and in 1837 resigned his keepership in order to devote himself exclusively to his secretarial duties. He was examined before the select committee appointed to inquire into the Museum in 1835-6, and made revelations on the subject of patronage.
About 1850 Forshall retired from the museum on account of ill-health. After his resignation he lived in retirement, spending much of his time, until his death, at the Foundling Hospital, of which he had been appointed chaplain in 1829. He died at his house in Woburn Place, London, in 1863, after undergoing a surgical operation
Henry Piddington was an English sea captain who sailed in East India and China and later settled in Bengal where he worked as a curator of a geological museum and worked on scientific problems, and is well known for his pioneering studies in meteorology of tropical storms and hurricanes. He noted the circular winds around a calm centre recorded by ships caught in storms and coined the name cyclone in 1848.
Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein was a Danish-born German prince who became a member of the British royal family through his marriage to Princess Helena of the United Kingdom, the fifth child and third daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Mary Anning was an English fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist who became known around the world for the discoveries she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the earth.
Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was twelve years old; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods.
Richard Whately was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, economist and theologian who also served as a reforming Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin.
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer and twice as Home Secretary. He is regarded as the father of modern British policing, owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service. Peel was one of the founders of the modern Conservative Party.