cutting edge of scientific knowledge resulted in large and enthusiastic audiences. The Society has had many notable presidents including the novelist Howard Spring who lived in Falmouth from 1947 to 1965 and served for eight years. Notable people Notable members and others associated with the Poly include: Jonathan Couch (1789–1870), physician and naturalist Thomas Brown Jordan (1807–1890), engineer Charles Lemon (1784–1868), FRS, MP, Chair of the Poly Henry Letheby (1816–1876), analytical chemist and public health engineer Matthew Paul Moyle (1788–1880), surgeon and geologist John Eastman Palmer, 19th-century photographer John Arthur Phillips (1822–1887), mining engineer and metallurgist William Westcott Rundell (1816–1897) Secretary of the Society from 1845–55 Walter Hawken Tregellas (1831–1894), writer Elizabeth Andrew Warren (1786–1864), botanist 21st-century developments There is no serious overview of developments in the Poly from its 19th-century heyday. Peter Gilson, the Society's historian until his death in 2009, prepared a basic chronology (Note 11), which is listed below. An initial judgement would be that the Society lost its scientific impetus sometime in latter decades of the 19th century, presumably reflecting the relative decline of Cornwall's economy which, in turn, was driven by relentless decline of the mining industry from the 1850s. The Society was left with a substantial building, which could be used for films and, from the mid-Century, theatrical productions. Members kept up programmes of exhibitions and lectures, but there were regular financial problems caused by the need to maintain an ageing building. During the 1950s, the author Howard Spring seems to have injected a new burst of life into the Society, and the development of Falmouth Art School (now, Falmouth University) meant that it was able to serve a thriving local artistic community. There were, however, growing tensions between the Artistic and more scholarly sides of the Society, which came to one particularly critical phase in 2006–10 when an ambitious attempt to develop a major commercially-driven artistic programme failed and brought the Society close to bankruptcy. A Community-led campaign to "Save Our Poly" produced a revitalisation of the Society, which now (2012) supports a varied programme of Films, Plays, Comedy, Talks, Artistic exhibitions and Local History. The Society is also the owner of the biggest collection of pictures of Henry Scott Tuke (over 200 paintings and drawings). In 2012, the Society is benefitting from the relative health of the local Falmouth economy, and from the emergence of the nearby Tremough campus of the Combined