Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy
The Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy is the name of a chair at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford.
Overview
The Sedleian Chair was founded by Sir William Sedley who, by his will dated 20 October 1618, left the sum of £2,000 to the University of Oxford for purchase of lands for its endowment. Sedley's bequest took effect in 1621 with the purchase of an estate at Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire to produce the necessary income.[citation needed]
It is regarded as the oldest of Oxford's scientific chairs. Holders of the Sedleian Professorship have, since the mid 19th century, worked in a range of areas of
Queen's College, Oxford.[citation needed
]
The Sedleian Professors in the past century have been
dynamical systems
.
List of Sedleian Professors
| Name | Years | Education | College as Professor | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edward Lapworth | 1621–38 | Oxford (St Alban Hall) | Magdalen College | Lapworth was admitted B.A. at Magdalen College, Lapworth supplicated for the degree of M.B. and for licence to practise medicine 1 March 1602–3. He was licensed on 3 June 1605, and was admitted M.B. and M.D. on 20 June 1611. Lapworth was moderator in vesperiis in medicine in 1605 and 1611, and respondent in natural philosophy on James I 's visit to Oxford in 1605. Lapworth was designated first Sedleian reader in natural philosophy under the will of the founder, William Sedley.
|
| John Edwards | 1638–48 | Oxford (St John's College) | St John's College | In 1617, Edwards was given a fellowship at St John's College, Oxford. The former President of the college, William Laud, in 1632 proposed Edwards as successor for the Headship of Merchant Taylor's School. He left this role at the end of 1634, and went back to Oxford. Edwards proceeded to the role of proctor, and in 1638 was appointed Sedleian reader, gaining the degrees of M.B. and M.D. |
| Joshua Crosse | 1648–60 | Magdalen Hall )
|
Magdalen College | Crosse matriculated from Magdalen College .
|
| Thomas Willis | 1660–75 | Oxford (Christ Church) | Christ Church | Willis was a kinsman of the iatrochemical and mechanical views.
|
| Thomas Millington | 1675–1704 | Cambridge (Trinity College) | All Souls College | A physician, Millington was present at the deathbed of pistil the female.
|
| James Fayrer | 1704–19 | Oxford (St Edmund Hall) | Magdalen College | Fayrer had matriculated at St Edmund Hall in 1672, and was a demy scholar of Magdalen College from 1674 to 1683. Graduating with a BA in 1676, he was elected to a fellowship at Magdalen in 1683, and received the degrees of Bachelor of Divinity (1690) and Doctor of Divinity (1704). He was Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1704, serving until his death on 22 February 1719/20. He had briefly been Rector of Appleton between 1709 and 1710.[1] |
| Charles Bertie | 1719–41 | Oxford (Christ Church) | All Souls College | Bertie was notoriously awarded the Sedleian readership despite no visible skill in the area. The appointment was rather to level his debts with his college. |
| Joseph Browne | 1741–67 | Oxford (Queen's College) | Queen's College
|
After rising to the Sedleian professorship in 1746, Browne was given prebendary of Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University .
|
| Benjamin Wheeler | 1767–82 | Oxford (Trinity College) | Magdalen College | Fellow of Magdalen College. Also Professor of Poetry (1766–76), Regius Professor of Divinity (1776–83), and Chancellor of the Diocese of Oxford.[2] |
| Thomas Hornsby | 1782–1810 | Oxford (Corpus Christi College) | Corpus Christi College | A celebrated astronomer, Hornsby made tens of thousands of astronomical observations in his lifetime, and was vital in the creation of the Radcliffe Observatory in 1772. In 1783, he became Radcliffe Librarian, and was appointed Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1788. The crater Hornsby on the moon is named after him. |
| George Leigh Cooke | 1810–53 | Oxford (Balliol College) | Corpus Christi College | Cooke was Keeper of the Archives at Oxford between 1818 and 1826, and, being a naturally outgoing person with an animated personality, was regarded as one of the leading players in the Literary Dining Club for Oxford academics. |
| Bartholomew Price | 1853–98 | Oxford (Pembroke College) | Pembroke College | Price published treatises on Differential calculus (in 1848) and Infinitesimal calculus (4 vols., 1852–1860), which were long-standing mainstays of reading lists on those subjects. Price taught Mad Hatter's song, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat”, a parody of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland .
|
Augustus Love
|
1899–1940 | Cambridge (St John's College) | Queen's College
|
Love was distinguished for his work on the mathematical theory of Love Waves, gained him the Adams Prize in 1911. Love also furthered the theory of tidal locking and devised the parameters known as Love numbers. He served as the president of the London Mathematical Society (1912–13), was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was awarded numerous other distinctions, including a Royal Medal (1909), the De Morgan Medal (1926) and the Sylvester Medal (1937).
|
| Sydney Chapman | 1946–53 | University of Manchester | Queen's College
|
Chapman was distinguished for his work on solar-terrestrial physics, where his contributions include predicting the presence of the magnetosphere in the early 1930s. Chapman gained many honours including election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Royal Medal (1934), the De Morgan Medal (1944), the Copley Medal (1964) and the Symons Gold Medal of the Royal Meteorological Society (1965). He was elected to the National Academies of Science of the United States, Norway, Sweden and Finland.[6] He served as president of the London Mathematical Society (1929–1931) and the Royal Meteorological Society (1932–1933). The lunar Crater Chapman is named in his honour. The American Geophysical Union organises "Chapman Conferences," which are named after him. The Royal Astronomical Society founded the Chapman Medal in his memory.
|
| George Frederick James Temple | 1953–68 | Birkbeck College )
|
Queen's College
|
Temple made significant contributions to Benedictine order and entered Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, where he remained until his death.
|
| Albert Green | 1968–79 | Cambridge (Jesus) | Queen's College
|
Green was one of the most distinguished British applied mathematicians of the twentieth century. His intellectual energy and passion for research were unwavering in a career extending over 63 years. His published work covers a very wide field and includes important contributions to the theoretical mechanics of solids and fluids and the general theory of continuous media. Over the first part of his career Green established a formidable reputation as a problem solver in classical branches of theoretical mechanics. Thereafter he became a leading figure in the modern revival of continuum mechanics and thermomechanics. The extent of the change was regretted by some of his British contemporaries because of what was seen as an abandonment of areas of practical significance for abstract theory. This view is scarcely borne out by a study of his writings, which show a taste for generality but not abstraction. Most of the areas in which he worked were related to aspects of the behaviour of actual materials and, whatever the degree of elaboration of the basic theoretical developments, there was a constant concern for applications, pursued in many cases to the solution of specific problems. His was a scientific journey of remarkable variety and boldness. |
| Brooke Benjamin | 1979–95 | University of Liverpool | Queen's College
|
Benjamin was a Bakerian lecture in 1992.
|
| John M. Ball | 1996–2019 | Cambridge (St John's) | Queen's College
|
Ball is distinguished for his research on King Faisal International Prize in Mathematics.
|
| Jonathan Keating | 2019– | University of Bristol | Queen's College
|
Keating has wide-ranging interests but is best known for his research in random matrix theory and its applications to quantum chaos, number theory, and the Riemann zeta function. |
Notes
References
- ^ "Faber-Flood", in Joseph Foster (ed.), Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 (Oxford, 1891), pp. 480-509.
- Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
Bibliography
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, articles on Lapworth, Edwards, Wallis, Millington, Browne, Hornsby, Cooke, Price, Love, Chapman, Temple, Brook Benjamin.
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