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
Res nullius Res nullius Res nullius (lit: "nobody's thing") is a Latin term derived from private Roman law whereby "res" (an object in the legal sense, anything that can be owned, even a slave, but not a subject in law such as a citizen nor land) is not yet the object of rights of any specific subject. Such items are considered ownerless property and are free to be acquired by means of "occupatio". Examples of "res nullius" in the socio-economic sphere are wild animals ("ferae naturae") or abandoned property ("res derelictae"). Finding can also be a means of occupation (i.e. vesting ownership),