by H. K. Higton
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Foster, Samuel (b. in or before 1600, d. 1652), mathematician, was born in Northamptonshire. His parents' names are not known but he had an elder brother, Walter Foster, who was also a mathematician. He was educated in Coventry before entering Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on 23 April 1616 as a sizar. He gained his BA in 1619 and his MA in 1623, after which he became usher at the grammar school in Coventry. At the same time he developed an interest in observational astronomy. On the death of Henry Gellibrand, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London, Foster was elected to the post on 2 March 1636. He resigned eight months later on 25 November, probably for religious reasons--he was a strict nonconformist and Ward claims that he refused to kneel for communion (Ward, 1.86). His successor, Mungo Murray, vacated the professorship on his marriage in 1641 and Foster was re-elected on 26 May of that year.
During the civil war and Commonwealth Foster's rooms became the meeting place for many of London's scholars. Royalists and parliamentarians alike joined together to discuss issues of mathematics and natural philosophy, in particular the new mechanical philosophy. It was from this group that the Royal Society eventually arose.
Foster devoted much of his time to making astronomical observations, concentrating especially on solar and lunar eclipses. He also designed and modified instruments (including those of one of his predecessors, Edmund Gunter), mainly for the use of artisans and seamen, and taught the use of these instruments during his lectures. He was renowned for his expertise in dialling and the construction of sundials. Owing to almost continuous ill health he published little during his lifetime but left many manuscript treatises. He died at Gresham College in May (not in July, as Ward has it) 1652, and was buried in the church of St Peter-le-Poer in Broad Street.
According to the contemporary scholar Dr John Twysden, Foster was 'a learned, industrious and most skilful mathematician' (Miscellanies, preface). His works reflected the important contribution which he made to the development of mathematical instruments in the seventeenth century. The two works published in his lifetime, The Use of the Quadrant (1624) and The Art of Dialling (1638), demonstrated his ability to facilitate the work of practical mathematicians by providing relatively easy instrumental methods to avoid long calculations. This was also evident in most of the manuscripts which were published posthumously by John Twysden and Edmund Wingate and which are either concerned with describing instruments or giving instruction in dialling. It was only in the Miscellanies, or, Mathematical Lucubrations of Mr Samuel Foster (edited by Twysden and published in 1659) that others of his interests were represented. This collection contains several astronomical tracts and editions of Aristarchus of Samos's writings on the sun and moon and of the lemmata of Archimedes, as well as further texts on the use of instruments.
H. K. HIGTON
Sources
E. G. R. Taylor, The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (1954)
I. R. Adamson, 'The foundation and early history of Gresham College, London, 1596-1704', PhD diss., U. Cam., 1976
J. Ward, The lives of the professors of Gresham College (1740)
Venn, Alum. Cant.
Miscellanies, or, Mathematical lucubrations of Mr Samuel Foster, ed. J. Twysden (1659)
J. Aubrey, Brief lives: a modern English version, ed. R. Barber (1982)
Archives
Bodl. Oxf., papers
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9968]
GO TO THE OUP ARTICLE (Sign-in required)