Abstract
THE Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford, to which Prof. H. H. Plaskett, professor of astrophysics at Harvard University, has recently been appointed, is the oldest chair of astronomy in Great Britain, with the exception of that at Gresham College, London. Like the Savilian professorship of geometry, it was founded in 1619 by Sir Henry Savile (1549–1622), the Elizabethan scholar, provost of Eton, and warden of Merton College, Oxford. John Bainbridge became the first occupant of the chair, Henry Briggs being his colleague in the chair of geometry. Briggs died in 1631 and Bainbridge in 1643, and both were buried in the choir of Merton College Chapel close to the memorial to Sir Henry Savile.During the renovation of the chapel, a good many years ago, the tombstone of Briggs and the memorials to Savile and Bainbridge were removed to the west end of the chapel, where they are to be seen to-day. The immediate successor of Bainbridge was John Greaves, who measured the pyramids; he was deprived of his chair by Parliament in 1648. The chair then passed to Seth Ward, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, while among his successors have been Wren (1661–1673),David Gregory (1691–1708), Bradley (1721–1762), Thomas Hornsby (1763–1810), Rigaud (1827–1839), W. F. Donkin (1842–1869), Charles Pritchard (1870–1893), and the late Prof. H. H. Turner, who held the chair from 1893 until his death last year.
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News and Views. Nature 128, 930–936 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128930c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128930c0