Thought this was cool and that some you might enjoy it… If I’m not mistaken, in the science community, being honored by the RSC is equivalent to being knighted by the Queen….
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LONDON (Reuters) – Victorian supersleuth Sherlock Holmes has become the first fictional character to be granted an honorary fellowship by Britain’s prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry.
The pipe-smoking detective, a creation of novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was honored in a ceremony Wednesday near his famous London address — 221b Baker Street.
“What he did was bring scientific methods into detective work as well as being a good honest cop,” the society’s secretary general David Giachardi told Reuters.
“He was probably the first truly scientific detective.”
The Society awarded Holmes a medal, which they hung around the neck of a statue of the detective. The man chosen to convey the honor was Doctor John Watson, a present day fellow of the society and namesake of Holmes’ hapless sidekick.
With his pipe, deerstalker hat and razor-sharp intuition, Holmes became a household favorite following his debut in Conan Doyle’s 1887 novel “A Study in Scarlet.”
Over the next 40 years, he appeared in 60 novels and short stories, solving dozens of baffling crimes.
In 1893 Conan Doyle killed off Holmes in his story “The Final Problem,” but the detective resurfaced nine years later in perhaps the best known tale: “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
The Royal Society of Chemistry, established in 1841, said the honor was unlikely to be extended to other fictional detectives.
“Honorary fellows have to be people with distinctions in chemistry or related scientists, and I don’t think Tintin quite qualifies,” Giachardi said.