Abstract
THOUGH during the celebration, next week, of the bicentenary of Sir Christopher Wren the main interest rnst needs centre around his great work as an architect, his position as one of the representative men of science of the seventeenth century should not be overlooked. Five years younger than Boyle, and ten years the senior of Newton, Wren had as his contemporaries Wilkins, Hooke, Goddard, Willis, Sydenham, Flamsteed, and Barrow. The year Wren was born Galileo was writing his iamous “Dialogues,” and in the subsequent developments which made England the scientific centre of the world Wren was one of the pioneers. While quite a youth Wren joined the group of philosophers who met at the lodgings of Wilkins or Boyle at Oxford, and at twenty- five he became Gresham professor of astronomy. Four years later he returned to Oxford as Savilian professor. The Royal Society owed much to him, and he was one of its earliest presidents. Perhaps not such an extraordinary boy as Young or Hamilton, his genius was recognised from the first. Barrow indeed, in 1662, referred to him “As one of whom it was doubtful whether he was most to be commended for the divine. felicity of his genius or for the sweet humanity of his disposition-formerly as a boy a prodigy; now as a man a miracle, nay, even something superhuman.”
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SMITH, E. The Bicentenary of Sir Christopher Wren. Nature 111, 257–258 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/111257a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/111257a0