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.[1]
Lapworth was admitted B.A. at St Alban Hall, Oxford on 25 October 1592, and M.A. 30 June 1595. From 1598 to 1610 he was Master of Magdalen College School. As a member of 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.
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.
Crosse matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1632, and graduated B.A. in 1634. Was elected fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford in 1642. He was nominated as delegate for the aid of parliamentary visitors at Oxford in 1647, and in 1648 was made proctor at Oxford and awarded a fellowship and the Sedleian professorship at Magdalen College.
Willis was a kinsman of the Willys Baronets of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire. He graduated M.A. from Christ Church, Oxford in 1642, and in the 1640s was one of the royal physicians to Charles I of England. One of several Oxford cliques of those interested in science grew up around Willis and Christ Church. Besides Robert Hooke, whom Willis employed as an assistant, others in the group were Nathaniel Hodges, John Locke, Richard Lower, Henry Stubbe and John Ward. (Locke went on to study with Thomas Sydenham, who would become Willis's leading rival, and with whom, both politically and medically, he held some incompatible views.) In the broader Oxford scene, he was a member of the "Oxford Club" of experimentalists with Ralph Bathurst, Robert Boyle, William Petty, John Wilkins and Christopher Wren. In 1656 and 1659 he published two significant medical works, De Fermentatione and De Febribus. These were followed by the 1664 volume on the brain, which was a record of collaborative experimental work. From 1660 until his death, he was appointed to the Sedleian professorship. He was also a founding member of the Royal Society. Willis later worked as a physician in Westminster, London, this coming about after he treated Gilbert Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1666. He had a successful medical practice, in which he applied both his understanding of anatomy and known remedies, attempting to integrate the two. He mixed both iatrochemical and mechanical views.
A physician, Millington was present at the deathbed of Charles II, and was one of the physicians who dissected the body of William III. He was also physician to Mary II, and Queen Anne. A conversation Millington had with Nehemiah Grew, and a proposition Millington put to him, led to Grew's groundbreaking botanical discovery that the stamen is the male sex organ in plants and the pistil the female.
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.[2]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
^Hollings, Christopher; McCartney, Mark, eds. (2023). Oxford's Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 7-8.
^"Faber-Flood", in Joseph Foster (ed.), Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 (Oxford, 1891), pp. 480-509.
