William Whiston
lived from 1667 to 1752
William Whiston succeeded Newton as Lucasian professor at
Cambridge, but was later deprived of his chair on religious
grounds.
William Whiston’s
father was Josiah Whiston who was a presbyterian minister at Norton.
William’s mother was Katherine Rosse, whose father Gabriel Rosse had
been the minister of Norton parish immediately prior to Josiah Whiston.
William, the fourth of his parents nine children, was born in the
rectory at Norton. William was taught by his father until he was 17, but
he also acted in a secretarial role by copying manuscripts for his
father. In 1684 he went to the grammar school in Tamworth then, in 1686,
after two years of school, he entered Clare College, Cambridge. He was
very poor since his father died shortly before he went to university.
However Whiston inherited the family library and was following
his father’s wishes that he train to become a presbyterian minister.
William attended
Newton’s lectures while at Cambridge and he showed great promise in
mathematics. He obtained his B.A. in 1690, then obtained a fellowship at
Clare College in 1691. Two years later he was awarded an M.A. and was
ordained in the same year. He was encouraged by David Gregory at
this time to study Newton’s Principia. He returned to Cambridge,
intending to take mathematics pupils, but ill health made him give up
his position as a tutor at Clare College.
From 1694 to 1698 he was chaplain to the bishop of Norwich. During this
period he wrote A New Theory of the Earth (1696), in which he
claimed that the biblical stories of the creation, flood etc. could
be explained scientifically as descriptions of events with historical
bases. He relied heavily on applying Newton’s physics (in fact the
book was dedicated to Newton) and on the new ideas about geology
which were then being developed, to support the biblical account. For
example he claimed that the biblical flood was due to a comet hitting
the Earth, an interesting theory given the current interest in theories
of this type. Of course the work mixed science and religion to
the extent that Whiston claimed that the comet was divinely
guided. A New Theory of the Earth proved very popular with French
and German translations appearing. Even those such as Buffon who
criticized Whiston’s book accepted some his ideas which they
incorporated into their own theories.
In 1698 Whiston obtained a vicarage in Suffolk at
Lowestoft-with-Kissingland. Up to this time he had continued to hold his
fellowship at Clare College, but he resigned in June 1699 which he was
forced to do in order to marry. He married Ruth Antrobus who was the
daughter of the headmaster of the grammar school in Tamworth which he
had attended. They had eight children, of whom four (Sarah, William,
George, and John) reached adulthood. His father-in-law, George Antrobus,
gave the newly married couple a farm near Dullingham in Cambridgeshire
which provided them with an annual income. He was appointed assistant to
Newton at Cambridge from February 1701. However Whiston fell out
with Newton over Bible chronology for, unlike Newton’s, his
cosmology involved direct intervention by God. Despite this much of
Whiston’s religious beliefs seem close to those of Newton.
In May 1702 Whiston succeeded Newton as Lucasian professor
and, in the following year, he published an edition of Euclid for the
use of students at Cambridge. With Newton’s agreement, Whiston published
Newton’s algebra lectures in 1707 under the title Arithmetica
universalis and, three years later, his own astronomy lectures as
Praelectiones astronomicae. The English version was published in 1715 as
Astronomical Lectures. He lectured at Cambridge on mathematics
and natural philosophy and, after Roger Cotes was appointed to the
Plumian professorship in 1706, receiving strong recommendations from
Whiston, they undertook joint research. Together they introduced the
first courses on experimental physics at Cambridge.
Whiston also published religious works such as Essay on the
Revelation (1706). He came to believe that the doctrine of the Trinity
was incorrect (as did Newton) and, although at first careful not to
publicly oppose the views of the established church, he later became
bolder and published his views in Sermons and Essays (1709). These views
were not popular and, after he refused to acknowledge that he was in
error, he was brought before the heads of the Cambridge colleges charged
with heresy. He was deprived of his chair on 30 October 1710 and
dismissed from Cambridge University. He went to London where a court was
set up by the lord chancellor to try him for heresy but, after the death
of Queen Anne, proceedings against him were dropped. A German visitor to
London who met him in 1710 described him as being:
... of very quick and
ardent spirit, tall and spare, with a pointed chin and wears his own
hair. In looks, he greatly resembles Calvin. He is very fond of
speaking and argues with great vehemence.
Whiston was now
rather poor and lived off the income of a small farm near Newmarket. To
make money he formed a partnership with Francis Hauksbee, who was
twenty years his junior, and from 1713 they gave a course covering
mechanics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, and optics. In the following year
they produced a course manual which was widely used and later formed the
basis of some of the courses at Oxford. He lectured in the coffee-houses
of London, being one of the first to demonstrate science experiments
during the lectures. As time went on his financial position improved as
various patrons provided an income for him. As a result, without needing
to make money, he lectured less.
In 1714, along with Humphrey Ditton, Whiston approached
parliament advising them to encourage work on solving the longitude
problem by offering large financial rewards. The idea was supported by
Newton, Clarke, Cotes, and Halley and the result was the Longitude Act
passed by parliament later in 1714. Having been one of the main
enthusiasts for the Longitude Act, Whiston now proposed a number of
methods of finding the longitude at sea; there was a lot of money for a
good solution but he never succeeded. The methods he proposed included
having vessels stationed at fixed points across the Atlantic, having
each fire a star shell at a fixed time each day. Ships would be able to
calculate their distance from such a vessel by calculating the time
taken for the sound of the shell to reach them afer the flash was
observed. One of his proposals concerned magnetic inclination and is
certainly not without interest. It is discussed in detail in [8].
Howarth writes that Whiston:
... made the first known
maps showing the direction of magnetic inclination (for
south-eastern England) in 1719 and 1720. He also anticipated
Graham’s 1723 measurement of the ratio of horizontal and vertical
magnetic intensities, and he understood their relationship to
magnetic inclination.
Howarth then tries to
understand how Whiston fitted the planar isoclinic surfaces:
This is of interest
because his study precedes the publication of ’Meyer’s method’ by
thirty-one years and the Legendre-Gauss ’method of least squares’ by
eighty-six years. It is suggested that Whiston fitted the surfaces
using observations of inclination at a chosen triple of localities;
and that he did this in order to use data from non-included
localities as a check on his model.
Whiston published
The Longitude and Latitude Found by the Inclinatory or Dipping Needle
in 1721.
While he was being subjected to charges of heresy he was bold enough to
set out his religious beliefs in a series of pamphlets Primitive
Christianity Revived (1711-12). Wanting to return to an early form
of Christianity, he founded the Society for Promoting Primitive
Christianity in 1715 which held meetings in Whiston’s London home.
Continuing with his theme of science and religion, he
published Astronomical Principles of Religion in 1717. He left
the Church of England in 1747 because of his objection to the Athanasian
creed, and joined the Baptists.
Lyndon Hall, where Whiston died, was the residence of Samuel
Barker, the husband of Whiston’s daughter Sarah. Ruth Whiston died
in 1751, and Whiston died in the following year after being ill for one
week. He was buried in Lyndon churchyard.
