Royal Society a compliment to Lord Brouncker, a peer and the first President of the Royal Society. The society's motto, "Nullius in verba", is Latin for "Take nobody's word for it". It was adopted to signify the fellows' determination to establish facts via experiments and comes from Horace's "Epistles", where he compares himself to a gladiator who, having retired, is free from control. The society's core members are the fellows: scientists and engineers from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth selected based on having made "a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science". Fellows
Sidney Verba department and earned a PhD. After graduate school Verba stayed at Princeton as a research assistant and then assistant and associate professor. In 1964, Verba moved to Stanford University, where he was a full professor for four years, and the University of Chicago for another four years. As a member of the Harvard faculty, Verba's contributions to the life of the scholarly community extend beyond the realm of his academic discipline or his administrative title. For example, even though he "retired" in 2007, he continued to chair a University Committee on Calendar Reform which had begun its work in 2003.