WREN, Sir CHRISTOPHER, a celebrated mathe matician, natural philosopher and architect, was born at East Knoyle, in Wiltshire, on the 20th Oc tober 1632. his father, Dr. C. Wren, was rector of Knoyle, and dean of Windsor. At the age of thirteen, young Wren is said to have invented some new astronomical instrument, and to have dedi cated an account of it to his father, in a Latin epistle. Owing to the delicacy of his health, he was educated by his father, and at the age of four teen was sent to \Vadham College, Oxford. At that early age his acquirements procured him the friendship of Bishop Walker, and Oughtred, in the preface to his Clavis Malhemulica, mentions Wren as having acquired, at the age of sixteen, a knowledge of the mathematics and natural philoso phy, which held out the promise of future dis tinction. One of the early inventions of our author was a kind of Puma Duplex, for which he took out a patent. He is said to have devoted his attention to the subject of vision through the microscope, and to have been assisted by Dr. Hooke in this in quiry. He soon after produced a theory of the planet Saturn, and an algebraic treatise on the Julian period. In 1653 he was elected a fellow of All-Souls College, and he soon afterwards went to London, where he devoted himself to the cultiva tion of the sciences. Wren is supposed to have about this time suggested that the variation in the height of the barometer was produced by the dif ferent weights of the superincumbent column of air, and the invention of the barometer even has been ascribed to him, but without any sufficient reason.
While Mr. Wren was at Oxford he devoted himself to the study of anatomy, and at the age of fifteen, he was employed as demonstrating assistant to Sir Charles Scarborough. Ile executed all the drawings for Dr. Willis's Treatise on the Brain, and he was the decided inventor of the celebrated physiological experiments, revived in our own times, of injecting various fluids into the veins of living animals.
In 1657, Wren was elected professor of as tronomy in Gresham College, and his inaugural oration, which greatly extended his reputation, is published in Ward's Lives of the Gresham Profes sors. In 1650 he solved the celebrated problem
of Pascal, which had been given as a challenge to English mathematicians, and he proposed another to the French mathematicians, which was never answered. In the year 1660, he invented a method for projecting Solar eclipses, and in the same year he established, along with ten other gentlemen, a weekly society, for the improvement of natural and experimental philosophy, which formed the founda tion of the Royal Society. In 1661, after the res toration, he was elected Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford, in the room of Dr. S. Ward, and in the same year he was made doctor of laws.
Among his various studies Dr. Wren had di rected his attention to architecture, and such was his knowledge, that Charles 11. sent for him from Oxford, to assist Sir John Denham, surveyor general of public works.
On the 20th May 1663, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, by the first council, and he communicated to that learned body a vast variety of discoveries, inventions, and improvements, many of which were lost, and others secretly sent abroad and appropriated by foreigders. Many of these discoveries are enumerated by Dr. Sprott in his history of the Royal Society. The following brief enumeration will show the immense extent of his attainments, and the diligence with which he devoted himself to scientific inquiries.
I. A lunar globe, representing the surface of the moon, with its various mountains and cavities. It was contrived so as to show the lunar phases, and the shadows of the mountains, and edges of the cavi ties. A model of it was placed in the king's cabinet.
2. He wrote a history of the seasons as to tem perature, weather, &c., and he contrived many meteorological instruments which registered their own indications, tracing out in lines the changes which took place in the observer's absence. The instruments which he thus improved were barome ters, thermometors, hygrometers, pluviometers, and anemometers.