BARNES WALLIS PRESENTATION COPY The Royal Society Its Origins and Founders

Near fine book in magenta cloth, inscribed by Barnes Wallis at the head of the first flyleaf and evidently read with some care by Stopes-Roe who has made half a page of pencilled notes on the verso of the final flyleaf. Also occasional pencilled marginalia, responding for example to Douglas McKie’s criticism of the futility of Baconian induction ‘but this was general: Johnson p192 et see index “Utility”’ and later a pencilled explication of Christopher Wren’s Parentalia. Provenance: from the estate of Mary Stopes Roe, Harry Stopes-Roe’s wife and Barnes Wallis's second daughter who helped her father in early experiments with marbles, a catapult and a tin bath as he tried to work out how to 'bounce' a bomb across water.

Barnes Wallis is best remembered for inventing the bouncing bomb which was used by the Royal Air Force in the 'Dambusters' raid to attack the dams of the Ruhr Valley during World War II. The raid was immortalised in the 1955 film The Dam Busters, in which Wallis was played by Michael Redgrave. Among Wallis's other inventions were his version of the geodetic airframe and the earthquake bomb. His election to the Royal Society in the final months of the war was in recognition of these achievements. His son in law Harry Stopes-Roe (1924-2014) was a humanist and lecturer in Science Studies at Birmingham University, explaining his interest in this history.