Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Elon Musk at an event in Maryland, 2025 — Source (Photo by Gage Skidmore: CC BY-SA)
Yesterday, the Fellows of the Royal Society met to discuss a proposal that had been on the docket for months: that Elon Musk, who had been elected to the Society seven years ago, be expelled on the basis of his character — an action that has only one precedent in the Royal Society’s 365 year history. Fellows in favor of ousting the appointed leader of America’s newfound “Department of Government Efficiency” call Musk’s actions a “threat to science” and “incompatible” with the Society’s code of conduct, charges stemming from his role in the radical cuts to scientific funding in the US. While Musk’s fellowship remained intact after the meeting on March 3, the Society agreed to take future action in order to “counter the misinformation and ideologically motivated attacks on both science and scientists.”
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Medallion relief portrait of Rudolf Erich Raspe by James Tassie (1735–1799) — Source.
In 1775, the Fellows of the Royal Society met to vote on the proposed expulsion of Rudolf Erich Raspe (1736–1794), who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society six years before. The German antiquarian, geologist, and author had made a name for himself by ferreting out languishing works in the Society’s library: a neglected trove of unpublished papers by Leibniz; a largely forgotten treatise on terrestrial change by Robert Hooke. Best remembered today as the author of Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia (1785), Raspe was also a fraudster, having fled Germany after embezzling artworks from the collections of the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. He was eventually expelled from the Royal Society on the charges of “diverse frauds” and “the infamy of his character”.
