Gresham Professors of Geometry

1597 Henry Briggs. A friend of John Napier, inventor of logarithms, Briggs devised common logarithms, still known as Briggsian logs.


1620 Peter Turner

1631 John Greaves

1643 Ralph Button

1648 Daniel Whistler. Later watched Great Fire of London with Samuel Pepys in 1666.

1657 Lawrence Rooke

1662 Isaac Barrow. Became first Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, a post next held by Isaac Newton.

1664 Arthur Dacres

1665 Robert Hooke. Prolific scientist. Best known for Hooke's Law and his work in microscopy. Worked with Christopher Wren (the Gresham Professor of Astronomy) to rebuild London after the Great Fire.


1704 Andrew Tooke. Married in 1729, so he had to resign the Professorship.

1729 Thomas Tomlinson

1732 George Newland

1749 William Roman

1759 Wilfred Clarke

1765 Samuel Kettleby


1808 Samuel Birch

1848 Robert Edkins. Edwin Abbott, author of Flatland, described Edkins as "eccentric to the point of madness."

1854 Morgan Cowie

1890 Karl Pearson. Statistician, popularised the chi square test.

1894 Henry Wagstaff


1939 Lectures in abeyance

1946 Louis Milne-Thomson

1956 Alan Broadbent

1969 Brian Thwaites. Founded the School Mathematics Project, SMP.

1972 Clive Kilmister

1988 Christopher Zeeman

1994 Ian Stewart. Prolific populariser of mathematics.

1998 Roger Penrose. Author of Emperor's New Mind; inventor of Penrose Tiles.


2001 Harold Thimbleby