Wilkins, John
Wilkins, John (1614–72). One of the most prominent of the remarkable group of amateur scientists in the mid-17th cent. He attended Oxford and took holy orders, becoming chaplain to a number of noblemen. In his first book, Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638), he argued that man could reach the moon and that it could be made habitable. The ‘invisible college’ of scientists which he organized was the forerunner of the Royal Society, established in 1660 with Wilkins as secretary. Joining the parliamentary side in the Civil War, he was appointed warden of Wadham College, Oxford, in 1648 and in 1656 married a sister of Oliver Cromwell, retaining his college headship. In 1659 he transferred to the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, and though he lost it at the Restoration, he was made dean of Ripon in 1663 and bishop of Chester in 1668. His reputation was as a conciliator and latitudinarian, anxious not to oppress the dissenters. Though some sneered at him as a time-server and trimmer, it is extraordinary that a man could live in such turbulent times and win such widespread praise. Burnet wrote that Wilkins had ‘as great a mind and as good a soul’ as any man he had known, and Evelyn, a close friend, thought him ‘universally beloved by all that know him’. Aubrey wrote that Wilkins was ‘no great read man, but one of much and deep thinking, and of a working head’.
J. A. Cannon
More From encyclopedia.com
NEARBY TERMS
Wilkins, John