Abstract
IN the later years of Newton's life, there were few figures better known among the men of science in London than that of the short, thickset, near-sighted but broadminded and generous Frenchman, John Theophilus Desaguliers, who died on February 29 two hundred years ago in his lodgings near Covent Garden. Born at La Rochelle on March 12, 1683, he was brought to England by his father at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and spent the remainder of his life here. At first his father was minister of the French chapel in Swallow Street, London, but also had a school at Islington. The son helped his father and then proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, and after taking his degree qualified for the Church. In 1710 he was appointed successor to Keill as lecturer in natural philosophy at Hart Hall, and three years later removed to Westminster, living first in Channel Row and then over the Bedford Coffee House, lecturing with great success year after year to "persons of all ranks and professions and even the ladies". He gained a reputation, too, by his translation of s'Gravesande's "Elements of Natural Philosophy". For many years he was demonstrator to the Royal Society and it Was to him that the first actual Copley Medal was given, although both he and Stephen Gray had previously received monetary awards under the Copley bequest. As a clergyman he held various livings, one of these being that of Whitchurch, Middlesex, of the church of which Handel was organist. In his works he gives full particulars of the many experiments he made and also much information about the principal mechanical constructions of his time. His death took place when he was nearly sixty-one, and he was buried in the Savoy. One of his sons, Thomas Desaguliers (died 1788), for many years superintended Woolwich Arsenal, and was the first scientific investigator into gunnery in the British Army.
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John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744). Nature 153, 246 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153246b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153246b0