A group of natural philosophers, including the architect and astronomer Christopher Wren, the chemist Robert Boyle and the diarist John Evelyn, had for some years held informal meetings in London and Oxford to discuss and demonstrate experimental science before formally constituting themselves as a society on 28 November 1660, following a lecture by Wren at Gresham College.
The new body adopted the motto Nullius in verba, roughly take nobody's word for it, to signal its commitment to establishing knowledge through experiment and observation rather than the citation of ancient authority, a stance aimed squarely at the scholastic method still dominant in universities. King Charles II granted the group a royal charter in July 1662, formally incorporating it as the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, and a second charter the following year confirmed its structure under a president and council elected by its fellows.
The Society began publishing Philosophical Transactions in 1665, generally recognized as the first scientific journal to establish continuous publication and peer review, and it quickly attracted the era's leading natural philosophers, with Isaac Newton serving as president from 1703 until his death in 1727, a tenure during which the Society's prestige as the arbiter of legitimate science in Britain became firmly established.