46 Britain's Heritage of Science 



CHAPTER II 



(Physical Science) 



THE HERITAGE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 

 during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 



T'HE range of activity covered by University teaching 

 in the sixteenth century is indicated by the subjects 

 assigned to the five Regius Professorships founded in 1546 

 at Oxford and Cambridge by King Henry VIII. These 

 were Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Civil Law, and Medicine, 

 the latter subject forming the only point of contact with 

 science. The practical demands of navigation were, how- 

 ever, beginning to stimulate the study of mathematics and 

 astronomy, and when Gresham College was founded in 1575, 

 separate professorships in these subjects were provided for. 

 A few years later (1583), Edinburgh appointed professors 

 of mathematics and natural philosophy, and Oxford followed 

 with the endowment of the Sedleian Professorship of Natural 

 Philosophy (1621), the Savilian Professorship of Geo- 

 metry (1619), the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy 

 (1621), and a Professorship of Botany (1669). During the 

 seventeenth century, Cambridge could only claim the 

 Lucasian Chair of Mathematics (1663), but it was the first 

 University with a Chair of Chemistry, endowed in 1702. 

 Its two Professorships of Astronomy were founded in 1704 

 and 1749 respectively. Chemistry and Botany being mainly 

 introduced as adjuncts to medicine, it appears that science 

 at the Universities may be said to have been confined to 

 the application of mathematics first to Astronomy, and 

 subsequently to other subjects, which, as they became more 

 definite began to supply material for the exercise of mathe- 

 matical skill. Experimental science for its own sake began 

 to be taught at the Universities only in comparatively recent 



