Thomas Digges

Thomas Digges (about 1546 to 1595) was an English mathematician and astronomer, the first to set out the Copernican system in English. He discarded the notion of a fixed shell of immovable stars and proposed instead infinitely many stars at varying distances, and he was the first to pose what is now called the dark night sky paradox. The son of the mathematician and surveyor Leonard Digges, he grew up after his father's death under the guardianship of John Dee. In 1583 Lord Burghley appointed him with John Chamber and Henry Savile to a commission on whether England should adopt the Gregorian calendar. He sat in Parliament for Wallingford, served as Muster-Master General to the English forces from 1586 to 1594 during the war with the Spanish Netherlands, and promoted improvements at the Port of Dover. He died in 1595 and was buried in the chancel of St Mary Aldermanbury in London.