William Whiston

author

William Whiston

1667–1752

Best known for succeeding Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, he was a mathematician, theologian, and vigorous religious controversialist whose ideas often put him at odds with the Church of England. His life joined early modern science with fierce debates about prophecy, church history, and biblical interpretation.

1 Audiobook

A Course of Mechanical, Magnetical, Optical, Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Experiments

A Course of Mechanical, Magnetical, Optical, Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Experiments

by Francis Hauksbee, William Whiston

About the author

Born in 1667, William Whiston was an English mathematician, natural philosopher, and theologian educated at Clare College, Cambridge. He became a follower of Isaac Newton and, in 1702, succeeded Newton as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge.

Whiston wrote on astronomy, chronology, and early Christianity, and he is especially remembered for trying to connect scientific ideas with biblical history. His A New Theory of the Earth helped make Newtonian thinking better known to a wider public, while his later writings on religion argued views that challenged orthodox Trinitarian doctrine.

Those religious views eventually cost him his Cambridge chair, and he was expelled from the university in 1710. Even so, he remained a prolific writer and public lecturer for decades, publishing on subjects ranging from prophecy to the works of the Jewish historian Josephus, before his death in 1752.