Seth Ward

Seth Ward, who lived from 1617 to 1689, was an English mathematician, astronomer and bishop. Born in Hertfordshire and educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, he became a fellow in 1640 but was deprived of the fellowship in 1644 for opposing the Solemn League and Covenant. He took instruction in mathematics from William Oughtred and in 1649 became Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford University, where his theory of planetary motion earned him a high reputation. It was set out in a 1653 work against the cosmology of Ismael Boulliau and in the Astronomia geometrica of 1656 on the system of Kepler. With John Wallis he was engaged in a decades-long controversy with Thomas Hobbes. In 1660 he was one of the founding fellows of the Royal Society of London, and he later nominated Isaac Newton for fellowship. He was consecrated Bishop of Exeter in 1662, was translated to Salisbury in 1667 and died at Knightsbridge in 1689.