John Wilkins

John Wilkins was the convenor — the man who pulled together the scientific circle at Oxford in the 1650s that, after the Restoration, formally constituted itself as the Royal Society.

Wilkins was educated at a school in Oxford run by Edward Sylvester, then matriculated at New Inn Hall and moved to Magdalen Hall, where he took his BA in 1631 and MA in 1634 and studied astronomy with John Bainbridge. Ordained a priest in Christ Church Cathedral in February 1638, he served as chaplain to several prominent figures during the political turbulence of the 1640s. He was a popular-science author before the term existed — The Discovery of a World in the Moone (1638) argued that the Moon was a habitable world; Mathematical Magic (1648) explored mechanical devices.

Warden of Wadham, 1648–1659

In 1648 Wilkins was appointed Warden of Wadham College — a Cromwellian appointment, but Wilkins managed political and religious tolerance such that Royalists were content to place their sons in his charge. The college prospered under him. Christopher Wren came up to Wadham in 1650 as one of his protégés.

What made the Wadham years matter was the Oxford Philosophical Club — the experimental-science group that Wilkins drew together and which had been constituted with a set of rules by 1650. Thomas Sprat's later account names the members: Goddard, Wallis, Ward, the young Wren, Ralph Bathurst, Robert Boyle, William Petty, Lawrence Rooke, Thomas Willis, Matthew Wren. Robert Hooke was gradually recruited — arriving at Christ Church in 1653, working as Willis's assistant, and by 1658 assisting Robert Boyle directly.

In 1656 Wilkins married Robina French (née Cromwell), Oliver Cromwell's youngest sister, after she was widowed by the death of Peter French, a canon of Christ Church. The marriage placed Wilkins close to the Protectoral household.

Trinity, Restoration, and the Royal Society

Shortly before Cromwell's death, Cromwell arranged for Wilkins's appointment as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge — confirmed by Richard Cromwell. At the Restoration in 1660, the new authorities deprived Wilkins of the position. After lodging in London with his friend Seth Ward and serving briefly at Gray's Inn and St Lawrence Jewry — losing his vicarage, library and scientific instruments in the 1666 Great Fire — he rebuilt his career through the Duke of Buckingham's patronage and was made Bishop of Chester in 1668.

When the Royal Society was chartered in 1662, Wilkins was a founding member and one of its first two secretaries, sharing the role with Henry Oldenburg, whom he had met in Oxford in 1656. The Society's formation drew directly from his Wadham circle.

A universal language

Wilkins's last great work was An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668), an ambitious attempt to design a logical universal language that would replace Latin and be — in his proposal — wholly unambiguous. The essay also proposed an integrated decimal system of measurement, a near-prototype of what would become the metric system. It is the work Jorge Luis Borges took as the subject of his essay The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.

Wilkins died in London on 19 November 1672, most likely from the medicines used to treat kidney stones. Gilbert Burnet called him "the wisest clergyman I ever knew. He was a lover of mankind, and had a delight in doing good."

Sources: Wikipedia: John Wilkins · Hertford College, Oxford — Wilkins biography · MacTutor History of Mathematics — Wilkins

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