by A. M. Clerke, rev. Anita McConnell
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Collingwood, Roger (fl. 1495-1517), mathematician, originated in the diocese of Durham, of unknown parentage. He was admitted as a questionist in May 1495 to the University of Cambridge, probably to Queens' College, graduating BA in 1496 and MA in 1499. During his tenure of a fellowship at Queens' in 1497 to 1510, Collingwood resided partly at Cambridge, where he held the first known mathematics lectureship in 1501-2, 1504-7 (receiving a fee of £4 in 1506), and 1514-17, and partly on the continent, where he was permitted to study canon law. He was living away from Cambridge in 1502-3, in Paris, and in 1507-11.
Collingwood's lectureship had probably been instituted by his teacher, Bishop Richard Foxe, patron of humanism and founder of Corpus Christi College. He was dean of chapel at Queens' in 1503-4, was appointed rector of Albury in Surrey in 1509, and served his college as senior proctor in 1513. Collingwood was also a practising mathematician and under the name of Carbo-in-ligno left a treatise in manuscript, 'Arithmetica experimentalis', dedicated to Bishop Foxe, and preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College. Nothing is known of Collingwood's subsequent life nor of the circumstances of his death.
A. M. CLERKE, rev. ANITA MCCONNELL
Sources
Cooper, Ath. Cantab., 1.24, 526
P. L. Rose, 'Erasmians and mathematicians at Cambridge in the early 16th century', Sixteenth Century Journal, 8 (1977), suppl. 2, pp. 47-9
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