Philately News » GB

Halley’s Comet

srmodh — Wed, 19 May 2010 02:42:54 +0000

Royal Mail issued a commemorative sheet of 10 stamps with appropriate labels and illustrated border, in an illustrated folder, on the centenary of the first photographed passing of Halley’s Comet.

Title: Halley’s Comet
Date of Issue: 18 May 2010
Country: Britain
Denominations:

Source: www.norphil.co.uk

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Action for Species Endangered Mammals

srmodh — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 11:41:12 +0000

The fourth in Royal Mail’s new nature series, ‘Action for Species’ concentrates on mammals. The series examines UK species that are endangered, but thanks to the efforts of conservation groups and the public, we have become increasingly aware of the threats to our mammal populations, and many now benefit from legal protection and active conservation measures, and are showing encouraging signs of recovery.

Humpback Whale – Megaptera novaeangliae (Average weight: 45 tonnes, total length: 13–15m)
This big, black whale with white under its tail has knobbly flippers that are longer than those of any other whale. Seen mainly in summer to the west of Britain, it arches its back to dive and feeds by sieving small fish from the water using a complex array of frilly plates found in its upper jaw instead of teeth.

Wildcat – Felis silvestris (Average weight: 5.5–6.5kg, total length: 75–110cm)
Shy and nocturnal, and now confined to the wilder parts of Scotland, the wildcat resembles a tabby cat with prominent black stripes on the body and legs. Its tail is thick and round-ended compared to the domestic cat’s thin, pointed tail, but there are many hybrids. Female wildcats can produce one family a year, in spring.

Brown Long-eared Bat – Plecotus auritus (Average weight: 6–10g, total wingspan: 26–29cm)
A small fluttery bat with enormous ears, this mammal is found throughout mainland Britain, except for the extreme north of Scotland. It commonly occurs in attics, as well as hollow trees and bird boxes, and often hovers to pick insects and spiders off trees. Completely harmless and a gentle creature, this is the bat most often found flying inside houses.

Polecat – Mustela putorius

Sperm Whale – Physeter macrocephalus (Average weight: 15–40 tonnes, total length: 10–15m)
The sperm whale, with its huge, blunt-ended head, is normally found in deep waters to the west of Britain, but occasionally strays into estuaries and gets stranded when the tide goes out. Usually solitary, the sperm whale sometimes lives in small groups. After swimming at the surface for about 10 minutes, it then dives deep for half an hour to feed, mainly on squid.

Water Vole – Arvicola terrestris (Average weight: 180–230g, total length: 29–31cm)
A rat-sized animal with a chubby face and dark chocolate-brown fur, the water vole is a good swimmer and lives beside ponds, rivers and ditches, where it digs burrows in the banks and feeds on juicy vegetation, roots and bark. It is found mainly in the lowlands, throughout mainland Britain, usually in small colonies.

Greater Horseshoe Bat – Rhinolophus ferrumequinum (Average weight: 15–30g, total wingspan: 33–39cm)
Large and broad-winged, this species of bat has a distinctive cone-shaped nose-leaf through which its echolocation sounds are focused. Its wings and ears are pale brown, and the fur is grey or buff, with a reddish tinge in older animals. Found mainly in south-west England and south Wales, it hibernates in caves, cellars and mines from October to May, wrapping its wings around its body while roosting. Its food consists of beetles and other large-bodied insects, caught in flight or snatched from the ground. In summer, females seek out warm places such as barn roofs, where, after a 75-day gestation period, they give birth to a single baby each year, nearly a third of its mother’s weight.

Otter – Lutra lutra (Average weight: 6–8kg, total length: 100–110cm)
Large, long and sleek with short legs and webbed feet, the otter is normally seen only in or beside water, where it swims and dives frequently in pursuit of fish, crabs and other aquatic food. More widespread and numerous in western counties, many live along the shores of Scotland’s sea lochs. Otters will usually live alone or in a family group of a female and one to three young.

Dormouse – Muscardinus avellanarius (Average weight: 10–30g, average body length: 12–15cm)
This golden-yellow mammal is the only British mouse with a thick fluffy tail. Found mostly in southern England, it is usually nocturnal and hibernates over the winter. Active among the branches of shrubs and trees, it feeds on flowers, fruits and insects.

Hedgehog – Erinaceus europaeus (Average weight: 500–1200g, total length: 20–25cm)
Britain’s only spiny mammal is found throughout the UK. Normally nocturnal, it snuffles about in gardens, farmland and woodland, feeding on worms, beetles and other small prey. It rolls into a tight ball when alarmed, and hibernates for five to six months over winter.

Title: Action for Species Endangered Mammals
Date of Issue: 13 April 2010
Country: Great Britain
Denominations: 1st class x 10

350th Anniversary of the Royal Society

srmodh — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:11:47 +0000

Founded in 1660, The Royal Society celebrates its 350th Anniversary in 2010 and as the National Academy of Science of the UK and the Commonwealth. It maintains its position at the forefront of inquiry and discovery, and at the cutting edge of scientific progress.

The backbone of the society, which is a charitable body, is its fellowship of the most eminent scientists of the day, and there are currently more than 60 Nobel Laureates amongst the society’s Fellows and Foreign Members, of which there are more than 1,400. To this day, Fellowship of The Royal Society is one the greatest honours that can be conferred on any scientist.

The origins of the society lie in an ‘invisible college’ of natural philosophers who first met in the mid 1640s and were united by a common desire to better understand the world and the universe through observation and experimentation. This spirit of empirical observation is encapsulated in the society’s Latin motto, ‘nullius in verba’, which can be roughly translated as ‘take nobody’s word for it.’

Robert Boyle, Chemistry
Boyle (1627 – 1691) was a natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor, and gentleman scientist, also noted for his writings in theology. He is best known for the formulation of Boyle’s Law. Although his research and personal philosophy clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition, he is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry. Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry.

Sir Isaac Newton, Optics
Newton (1643 –1727) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is perceived and considered by many as one of the most influential men in history. His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is by itself considered to be among the most influential books in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton was also president of The Royal Society. The 300th anniversary of Principia Mathematica was marked by a set of four stamps in 1987.

Benjamin Franklin, Electricity
Franklin (1706 –1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He was important in the development of scientific experimentation and invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass ‘armonica’. Franklin appeared on the 11p US Bicentenary stamp issued in 1976.

Edward Jenner, Vaccination
Jenner (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) is widely credited as the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, and is sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Immunology’. Jenner observed that milkmaids rarely got smallpox and concluded that exposure to the bovine disease cowpox conferred immunity a theory he tested and proved by injecting a child with pus from cowpox blisters. Jenner’s development of the smallpox vaccine was marked by a 20p stamp in the ‘Patients Tale’ Millenium set in March 1999.

Charles Babbage, Computing
Babbage, (1791 – 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Babbage was pictured on a 22p Scientific Achievements stamp in 1991.

Alfred Russel Wallace, Evolution
Wallace (1823 – 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He is best known for independently proposing a theory of natural selection which prompted the joint reading of his and Charles Darwin’s papers on evolution in 1858, and spurred Darwin to publish his own theory the following year.

Joseph Lister, Antiseptic Surgery
Lister, 1st Baron Lister, (1827 – 1912) was an English surgeon who promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He successfully introduced carbolic acid (phenol) to sterilize surgical instruments and to clean wounds, which led to reduced post-operative infections and made surgery safer for patients. The centenary of Lister’s discovery of Antispectic Surgery was marked by two stamps issued in 1965.

Ernest Rutherford, Atomic Structure
Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, (1871 – 1937) was a New Zealand born chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. He discovered that atoms have a small charged nucleus, and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model (or planetary model, which later evolved into the Bohr model or orbital model) of the atom, through his discovery of Rutherford scattering with his gold foil experiment. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. He is widely credited as splitting the atom in 1917 and leading the first experiment to ‘split the nucleus’ in a controlled manner by two students under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in 1932. He was also president of The Royal Society.

Dorothy Hodgkin, Crystallography
The stamp marks the centenary of the birth of Dorothy Mary Hodgkin, (1910 –1994). She was a British chemist, credited with the development of Protein crystallography. She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three dimensional structures of biomolecules. Hodgkin was also the first female Briton to win a Nobel Prize. Hodgkin was also featured on a 20p ‘Famous Women’ stamp in 1998.

Sir Nicholas Shackleton, Earth Sciences
Shackleton (1937 – 2006) was a British geologist and climatologist who specialised in the Quaternary Period. Much of Shackleton’s later work helped to clarify the rates and mechanisms of aspects of climate change – a fitting subject to bring the stamp set right up to date.

Title: 350th Anniversary of the Royal Society
Date of Issue: 25 February 2010
Country: Great Britain
Denominations: 1st class x 10