Samuel Foster
Samuel Foster was an English mathematician and astronomer. He made several observations of eclipses, both of the sun and moon, at Gresham College and in other places; and he was known particularly for inventing and improving planetary instruments.
Life
A native of Northamptonshire, he was admitted a sizar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge on 23 April 1616, as a member of which he proceeded B.A. in 1619, and M.A. in 1623. On the death of Henry Gellibrand, he was elected Gresham Professor of Astronomy on 2 March 1636, but resigned later in the year and was succeeded by Mungo Murray. In 1641, Murray having vacated the professorship by his marriage, Foster was re-elected on 26 May.During the civil war and Commonwealth he was one of the society of gentlemen who met in London for cultivating the 'new philosophy,' in the group around Charles Scarburgh. In 1646 John Wallis received from Foster a theorem on spherical triangles which he afterwards published in his Mechanica. Wallis's retrospective account of the origins of the Royal Society made Foster's lectures a rendezvous of the London-based Scarburgh-Jonathan Goddard group; but it is disputed to what extent this connection was with Gresham College and its tradition, rather than simply the location.
Foster died at Gresham College in May 1652, and was buried in the church of St. Peter the Poor in Broad Street.
Works
He published little himself, but many treatises written by him were printed after his death, though John Twysden and Edmund Wingate, his editors, state that long illness caused them to be left very imperfect, and Twysden complains that some people had taken advantage of his liberality by publishing his works as their own. In the following list of Foster's works, only the first two were published before his death:- , London, 1624. An octavo edition was published soon after the author's death in 1652 by A. Thompson, who says in his preface that the additional lines were invented, and the uses written, for an 'appendix' to Edmund Gunter's 'Quadrant;' only a few copies were printed alone for Foster's friends. It was republished in the 5th edition of The Works of Edmund Gunter.
- , London, 1638. A published in 1675, has several additions and variations taken from the author's own manuscript, and also a 'Supplement' by the editor, William Leybourn. John Collins published in 1659 Geometrical Dyalling, being a full explication of divers difficulties in the works of learned Mr. Samuel Foster.
- . , London, 1652.
- , edited by John Twysden and Edmund Wingate, 4 pts, London, 1654.
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- , edited by John Twysden, a collection of works by Foster written in English and Latin, some translated by Twysden, with a few intermediate additions by Twysden and a few works by other authors appended by publisher William Leybourn. Latin and English, 19 pts. fol. London, 1659. The sections by Foster are:
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- * , epitome of Aristarchus of Samos's On the Sizes and Distances
- * , translation by John Greaves of the Book of Lemmas, attributed to Archimedes, from Arabic to Latin, revised by Foster
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- , an improvement of Gunter's sector, printed in The Works of Edmund Gunter, 4th edition and 5th edition, by William Leybourn, who in the latter edition corrected some mistakes which had appeared in the former from Foster's own manuscript.
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