scientist ever to appear on the membership rolls of the society. Another famous fellow was biologist Thomas Huxley, who would later gain the nickname "Darwin's bulldog" for his outspoken defence of Darwin and evolution. Men notable in other walks of life have also been fellows of the society, including the physician Edward Jenner, pioneer of vaccination, the Arctic explorers Sir John Franklin and Sir James Clark Ross, colonial administrator and founder of Singapore, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and Prime Minister of Britain, Lord Aberdeen. Biological evolution and the society The first public exposition of the 'Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection', arguably the greatest single leap of progress made in biology, was presented to a meeting of the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858. At this meeting a joint presentation of papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace was made, sponsored by Joseph Hooker and Charles Lyell as neither author could be present. The society's connection with evolution remained strong into the 20th century. Sir Edward Poulton, who was president 1912–1916, was a great defender of natural selection, and was the first biologist to recognise the importance of frequency-dependent selection. Female fellows In 1904 the society elected its first female fellows, following a number of years of tireless campaigning by the botanist Marian Farquharson. Whilst the society's council was reluctant to admit women, the wider fellowship was more supportive; only 17% voted against the proposal. Among the first to benefit from this were the ornithologist and photographer Emma Louisa Turner, Lilian J. Veley, a microbiologist and Annie Lorrain Smith, a lichenologist and mycologist, all formally admitted on 19 January 1905. Also numbered in the first cohort of women to be elected in 1904 were: the paleobotanist, and later pioneer of family planning, Marie Stopes, the philanthropist Constance Sladen, founder of the Percy Sladen Memorial Trust and Alice Laura Embleton (1876–1960), biologist, zoologist and suffragist, who had been one of the earliest women to deliver a paper to the society on 4 Jun 1903. Although others were admitted in 1904, Marian Farquharson "was shamefully blackballed" as the society now states, until admitted in 1908. The painting "Admission of Lady Fellows" by James Sant R.A., which hangs on the upper staircase, shows the eleven women signing the Society's Book of Admission and Obligation on 19 January 1905. The painting was altered to remove the figures of T R R Stebbing, the