48 Britain's Heritage of Science 



in his will for the foundation of a college. The first lectures 

 were given in 1597, each professor receiving the stipend 

 of 50, a sum somewhat larger than the revenue of the 

 Regius Professors at Oxford and Cambridge, which was 

 40. The building contained residential quarters for the 

 professors, an observatory, a reading hall, and some alms- 

 houses. It ultimately proved to be too expensive to be 

 maintained with the available funds, and in 1768 was 

 handed over to the Crown; the lectures were then held 

 in the Royal Exchange until 1843, when the present building 

 was erected. 



The appointment of the professors was, by Gresham's 

 will, vested in the Mayor and Corporation of London, who 

 in their first selection consulted the Universities of Oxford 

 and Cambridge, requesting them to nominate two candi- 

 dates for each of the seven professorships ; the final selection 

 included three graduates of Oxford, three of Cambridge, 

 and one who was a graduate of both Universities. The 

 first Professor of Geometry at Gresham College was Henry 

 Briggs (1561-1631), who, after the discovery of logarithms 

 by Napier, calculated complete tables, and thus made 

 their general use possible He also introduced the present 

 notation of decimal fractions, one of the most important 

 advances in the history of arithmetic. The last twelve 

 years of his life were spent at Oxford, where he held the 

 newly-founded Savilian Professorship of Geometry. 



Edward Wright (1560-1615), a mathematician closely 

 associated with Napier and Briggs, translated into English 

 the Latin original of the work which contains the first 

 account of logarithms, but his name deserves chiefly to be 

 remembered in connexion with navigation, to which science 

 he rendered conspicuous service by laying the scientific 

 foundation of the method of constructing maps known as 

 ** Mercator's Projection." Wright studied at Cambridge, 

 was elected to a fellowship of Caius College, and became a 

 teacher of mathematics in the service of the East India 

 Company. 



Among those who, during the seventeenth century, held 

 professorships at Gresham College, we note John Greaves, 

 Isaac Barrow, Robert Hooke, Edward Gunter, Henry Gilli- 



