Challis Professorship


The Challis Professorship are professorships at the University of Sydney named in honour of John Henry Challis, an Anglo-Australian merchant, landowner and philanthropist, whose bequests to the University of Sydney allowed for their establishment.
In 1880, Challis bequeathed residuary real and personal estate to the University, "to be applied for the benefit of that Institution in such manner as the governing body thereof shall direct". From the income of the Fund a sum of £7,500 was applied for the payment of half the cost of the erection of a new Chemical Laboratory, and a further sum of £1,900 devoted to the erection of a marble statue of Challis, which was placed in the university's Great Hall. The Challis appointments were then created.

Holders

English

This chair appears to have been the fourth of its kind in the English-speaking world. Its predecessors were the Regius Chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh; the Chair of Jurisprudence and the Law of Nations at UCL; and the Chair of Jurisprudence and International Law at Trinity College, Dublin. It was split after Stone's retirement into two separate chairs.
The chair was founded in 1899, but renamed in to Zoology when Botany was created as a separate chair. It returned to its original name in 1963.