History of The Chair
Lucas, in his will, bequeathed his library of 4,000 volumes to the university and left instruction for the purchase of land whose yielding should provide £100 a year for the founding of a professorship. One of the stipulations in Lucas' will was that the holder of the professorship should not be active in the church. Isaac Newton later appealed to King Charles II that this requirement excused him from taking holy orders, which was compulsory for most fellows of the university at that time (some fellowships were exempt). The King supported Newton, and excused all holders of the professorship, in perpetuity, from the requirement to take holy orders.
The current holder of the post is the theoretical physicist Michael Green who is currently a fellow in Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge. He was appointed in October 2009, succeeding Stephen Hawking who retired in September 2009, in the year of his 67th birthday, as required by the University. Hawking now holds the position of Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.
Read more about this topic: Lucasian Professor Of Mathematics
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history and/or chair:
“The history of medicine is the history of the unusual.”
—Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)