Born Ashby‐de‐la‐Zouch, Leicestershire, England, 1582
Died Oxford, England, 3 November 1643
As one of the first astronomers to observe a comet telescopically and compute its parallax, and as the first Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford University, John Bainbridge established a high standard for both research and pedagogy for his successors in academic astronomy. Bainbridge, the son of Robert and Anne (née Everard) Bainbridge, attended grammar school in Ashby, England, and later entered Cambridge University where he received his B.A. in 1603, M.A. in 1607, and M.D. in 1614. Bainbridge returned to Ashby in 1614 where he established his medical practice, and started a grammar school at which he taught for 4 years. In what little leisure time was available to him, he occupied himself with the study of mathematics and astronomy.
On the advice of some friends, Bainbridge moved to London in early 1618, where he soon became a member of the “Gresham Circle,” a group of Puritan scholars...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Selected References
Anon. (1747). “Bainbridge, John.” In Biographia Britannica. Vol. 1, pp. 419–421. London: Printed for W. Innys.
Austin, Preston Bruce (1921–1922). “Bainbridge, John.” In Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. Vol. 1, p. 906. London: Oxford University Press.
Bainbridge, John (1619). An Astronomicall Description of the late Comet from the 18. of Novemb. 1618. to the 16. of December following. With certain Morall Prognosticks or Applications drawne from the Comets motion and irradiation amongs the celestiall Heiroglyphicks. London: Edward Griffin.
——— Correspondence. MS Smith 92 and MS Add. A. 380. Oxford: Bodleian Library.
——— Eleven volumes of unpublished manuscripts. MSS 382–86, James Ussher Collection. Dublin: Trinity College.
Feingold, Mordechai (1984). The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England, 1560–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, esp. pp. 143–149, 161–165.
Genuth, Sara Schechner (1997). Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 53–55.
Parr, Richard (1686). The Life of … James Usher. London: Printed for Nathanael Ranew, pp. 141, 320, 370–371, 390, and 411.
Taylor, E. G. R. (1954). “Bainbridge, John.” In The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Early Stuart England. Cambridge: University Press, p. 197.
Yeomans, Donald K. (1991). Comets: A Chronological History of Observation, Science, Myth, and Folklore. New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 66–67.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Catt, P.A. (2007). Bainbridge, John. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_100
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_100
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-31022-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30400-7
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics