Sir Christopher Wren
was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including what is regarded as his masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710 Born 30 October 1632 East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England Died 8 March 1723 London, England Nationality: English, Westman Part 1 focuses on the accomplishments of Wren Excluding St. Paul's Cathedral |
Part 1
The Christopher Wren Story
The year is 1650, Oxford University. Christopher Wren in a group of 12 men are meeting in the invisible college. They discussing and deciphering how the universe works. Much progress was being made in the 17th century in such subjects as astronomy, anatomy, mechanics, physiology and groups were established to disseminate and to gain greater understanding of the physical universe and to harness technologies that arise from this understanding.
A number of independent, scientifically minded men and university people established a private and informal group that became known as the ‘the Invisible College. The Invisible College was based on Francis Bacon’s principles that knowledge is power and that all knowledge has been given for use to the benefit of man. The Invisible College is important in history as it was one of the first groups that realised the importance of scientific research and made major contributions to the expansion of scientific experimentation in Britain and to the formation of scientific societies. Their motto “take nobody’s word for it”.
Christopher Wren: Westman
Nationality: English
Born: October 20, 1632
Died February 25, 1723
Why include Wren as one of our Great Westmen?
Wren was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. After the great fire in 1666 King Charles II hired Wren to oversee the reconstruction of all the royal works, that is all the government buildings in London. He was also accorded the responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire, including his architectural and engineering masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill. We could just launch into the story of St. Paul’s but that would not do justice to Wren’s story, so a little background first.
Christopher Wren grew up during dangerous times during the English Civil War when his father's Royal associations would have required the family to keep a very low profile from the ruling Parliamentary authorities. It was a difficult time in his life, but one which would go on to have a significant impact upon his later works. He attended the Westminster School between 1641 and 1646 where one of his class mates was Robert Hooke. Hooke went on to become a Great Westman in his own right. He most famously discovered the Law of Elasticity (or Hooke's Law) and did a huge amount of work on microbiology publishing his landmark book, the Micrographia, which included sketches of nature’s small wonders as viewed through a microscope. Hooke will show up later to help Wren save the Dome that is now a top St. Paul’s.
Receiving his M.A. in 1653, Wren was elected a fellow of All Souls' College in the same year and began an active period of research and experiment in Oxford. His days as a fellow of All Souls ended when Wren was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London in 1657. He was provided with a set of rooms and a stipend and was required to give weekly lectures in both Latin and English to all who wished to attend; admission was free. Wren took up this new work with enthusiasm. He continued to meet with the men with of the invisible college who attended his London lectures and in 1660, initiated formal weekly meetings. It was from these meetings that the Royal Society, England's premier scientific body, was to develop.
In 1662, they proposed a society "for the promotion of Physical-Mathematical Experimental Learning." This body received a Royal Charter from Charles II and "The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge" was born. In addition to being a founding member of the Royal Society, Wren was president of the Society from 1680 to 1682.
The main sources for Wren's scientific achievements are the records of the Royal Society. His scientific works ranged from astronomy, optics, the problem of finding longitude at sea, cosmology, mechanics, microscopy, surveying, medicine, meteorology and mathematics. He was a true polymath. But Wren’s name will always be synonymous with English architecture and St. Paul’s Cathedral. But how is that? He seems to be more of a scientist and mathematician, not an architect. Well, in the 17th century architecture could be considered a branch of mathematics. Wren's first venture into architecture came in 1662, when he designed the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, a building intended for university ceremonies. Based upon the concept of a Roman theater, his ingenious interior design left the space free of supports or columns, the exterior was of a modest classical design.
At Pembroke College Wren designed a chapel. It was the first college in Cambridge to have a Chapel of its own: earlier Colleges worshiped in the nearest parish church. Its was designed in the new classical style that set the fashion for other College chapels and to this day continues to afford a setting for Christian worship and music. As an aside the Stokes family arms were added to a stained glass chapel window in 1906 to honor George Stokes, a brilliant mathematician and Great Westman. Stokes is most known for the theorem that bears his name, Stoke’s Theorem it is the fundamental theorem for curls in vector calculus. It is one of the vector theorems that allowed Maxwell’s 20 equations of electrodynamics to be simplified into the 4 vector equations used in electrical engineering today. See the video James Clerk Maxwell, another member of hall of great Westmen.
Interesting how Wren’s story is intersecting with other Great Westmen, but wait, there will be more Westmen making cameo appearances. In the interest of time we will not go over Wren’s scientific accomplishments except to acknowledge that Christopher Wren’s figure of the brain in Thomas Willis’s Cerebri anatome in (1664) set a precedent, not only for subsequent images of the brain, but for scientific illustration. Wren’s images are in fact etchings (produced by the acid process), significant because etching for book illustration was in its infancy in England. In the study of lenses Wren disscected and a horse’s eye and applied what he had learned to make improvements in telescopes and microscopes. So we can add experimental etcher, draughtsman, natural historian, and anatomist to his resume. Continuing his architectural achievements we have the:
Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich
The hospital was created as the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich on the instructions of Queen Mary II, who had been inspired by the sight of wounded sailors returning from the Battle of La Hogue in 1692. The hospital was not a hospital as we would know it today but a more of a convalescent home, a place of hospitality. She ordered the King Charles wing of the palace--originally designed by John Webb for King Charles II in 1664—to be remodeled as a naval hospital to provide a counterpart for the Chelsea Hospital for soldiers. Sir Christopher Wren and his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor gave their services free of charge as architects of the new Royal Hospital. Sir John Vanbrugh succeeded Wren as architect, completing the project to Wren's original design. It was later converted to the Royal Naval College.
Hampton Court Palace
The palace at Hampton court along with St. Paul’s is one of the most spectacular buildings Wren ever designed. Built in the baroque style for King William III and Queen Mary II at the end of the 17th century the palace is another of Wren’s impressive, building designs.
Kensington Palace
In 1689, Wren was asked by William III and his wife Mary II to renovate and expand a property then known under the name Nottingham House. He reoriented the house to face westward and added two entire wings to the building. Wren made only one journey out of England, a visit of several months to France in 1665 to study the French Renaissance and baroque architecture. And perhaps to also escape the plague of 1665 that befell London. The French journey had significant influence on his work and provided him with a deep source of inspiration. It was in Paris that he met another Great Westman, Gian Lorenzo Berini, the Italian architect and sculptor. Bernini was in Paris to work as an architect for King Louis XIV, to complete work on the royal palace of the Louvre. Not much is known about their meeting other than Wren reviewed Berini’s drawings and the two discussed baroque design. If you survived the Great Plague of 1665 you probably thought that 1666 could only end better. That was not to be the case.
A fire started on September 2nd in the King’s bakery in Pudding Lane near London Bridge. Fires were quite a common in those days and were quickly put out. And, when the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth was woken up to be told about the fire, he replied “Well, A woman might piss it out!”. However that summer had been very hot and there had been no rain for weeks, so the wooden houses and buildings were tinder dry. Once the fire started there was no stopping it. A strong east wind spread the flames, jumping from house to house. Streets were a narrow rabbit warren maze of wooden Tudor structures that were so densely packed that the roof tops sometimes touched one another. Efforts to control the fire using bucket brigades quickly failed. Chaos and panic reigned supreme. As a last resort gunpowder was used to blow up houses that lay in the path of the fire to create fire breaks the fire could not jump. Amid the chaos of the fire the sound of the explosions started rumours that a French invasion was taking place…. even more panic!!
The fire was finally extinguished on September 6th. The bad news, 4/5ths of London was destroyed, gone. Hundreds of thousands of people left homeless, 13,000 private dwellings destroyed. The good news: The fire burned out most of the black rats and fleas that were spreading the plague. Christopher Wren was appointed surveyor of Works and given the task of re-building London, this would include his masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral
The Christopher Wren Story
The year is 1650, Oxford University. Christopher Wren in a group of 12 men are meeting in the invisible college. They discussing and deciphering how the universe works. Much progress was being made in the 17th century in such subjects as astronomy, anatomy, mechanics, physiology and groups were established to disseminate and to gain greater understanding of the physical universe and to harness technologies that arise from this understanding.
A number of independent, scientifically minded men and university people established a private and informal group that became known as the ‘the Invisible College. The Invisible College was based on Francis Bacon’s principles that knowledge is power and that all knowledge has been given for use to the benefit of man. The Invisible College is important in history as it was one of the first groups that realised the importance of scientific research and made major contributions to the expansion of scientific experimentation in Britain and to the formation of scientific societies. Their motto “take nobody’s word for it”.
Christopher Wren: Westman
Nationality: English
Born: October 20, 1632
Died February 25, 1723
Why include Wren as one of our Great Westmen?
Wren was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. After the great fire in 1666 King Charles II hired Wren to oversee the reconstruction of all the royal works, that is all the government buildings in London. He was also accorded the responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire, including his architectural and engineering masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill. We could just launch into the story of St. Paul’s but that would not do justice to Wren’s story, so a little background first.
Christopher Wren grew up during dangerous times during the English Civil War when his father's Royal associations would have required the family to keep a very low profile from the ruling Parliamentary authorities. It was a difficult time in his life, but one which would go on to have a significant impact upon his later works. He attended the Westminster School between 1641 and 1646 where one of his class mates was Robert Hooke. Hooke went on to become a Great Westman in his own right. He most famously discovered the Law of Elasticity (or Hooke's Law) and did a huge amount of work on microbiology publishing his landmark book, the Micrographia, which included sketches of nature’s small wonders as viewed through a microscope. Hooke will show up later to help Wren save the Dome that is now a top St. Paul’s.
Receiving his M.A. in 1653, Wren was elected a fellow of All Souls' College in the same year and began an active period of research and experiment in Oxford. His days as a fellow of All Souls ended when Wren was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London in 1657. He was provided with a set of rooms and a stipend and was required to give weekly lectures in both Latin and English to all who wished to attend; admission was free. Wren took up this new work with enthusiasm. He continued to meet with the men with of the invisible college who attended his London lectures and in 1660, initiated formal weekly meetings. It was from these meetings that the Royal Society, England's premier scientific body, was to develop.
In 1662, they proposed a society "for the promotion of Physical-Mathematical Experimental Learning." This body received a Royal Charter from Charles II and "The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge" was born. In addition to being a founding member of the Royal Society, Wren was president of the Society from 1680 to 1682.
The main sources for Wren's scientific achievements are the records of the Royal Society. His scientific works ranged from astronomy, optics, the problem of finding longitude at sea, cosmology, mechanics, microscopy, surveying, medicine, meteorology and mathematics. He was a true polymath. But Wren’s name will always be synonymous with English architecture and St. Paul’s Cathedral. But how is that? He seems to be more of a scientist and mathematician, not an architect. Well, in the 17th century architecture could be considered a branch of mathematics. Wren's first venture into architecture came in 1662, when he designed the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, a building intended for university ceremonies. Based upon the concept of a Roman theater, his ingenious interior design left the space free of supports or columns, the exterior was of a modest classical design.
At Pembroke College Wren designed a chapel. It was the first college in Cambridge to have a Chapel of its own: earlier Colleges worshiped in the nearest parish church. Its was designed in the new classical style that set the fashion for other College chapels and to this day continues to afford a setting for Christian worship and music. As an aside the Stokes family arms were added to a stained glass chapel window in 1906 to honor George Stokes, a brilliant mathematician and Great Westman. Stokes is most known for the theorem that bears his name, Stoke’s Theorem it is the fundamental theorem for curls in vector calculus. It is one of the vector theorems that allowed Maxwell’s 20 equations of electrodynamics to be simplified into the 4 vector equations used in electrical engineering today. See the video James Clerk Maxwell, another member of hall of great Westmen.
Interesting how Wren’s story is intersecting with other Great Westmen, but wait, there will be more Westmen making cameo appearances. In the interest of time we will not go over Wren’s scientific accomplishments except to acknowledge that Christopher Wren’s figure of the brain in Thomas Willis’s Cerebri anatome in (1664) set a precedent, not only for subsequent images of the brain, but for scientific illustration. Wren’s images are in fact etchings (produced by the acid process), significant because etching for book illustration was in its infancy in England. In the study of lenses Wren disscected and a horse’s eye and applied what he had learned to make improvements in telescopes and microscopes. So we can add experimental etcher, draughtsman, natural historian, and anatomist to his resume. Continuing his architectural achievements we have the:
Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich
The hospital was created as the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich on the instructions of Queen Mary II, who had been inspired by the sight of wounded sailors returning from the Battle of La Hogue in 1692. The hospital was not a hospital as we would know it today but a more of a convalescent home, a place of hospitality. She ordered the King Charles wing of the palace--originally designed by John Webb for King Charles II in 1664—to be remodeled as a naval hospital to provide a counterpart for the Chelsea Hospital for soldiers. Sir Christopher Wren and his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor gave their services free of charge as architects of the new Royal Hospital. Sir John Vanbrugh succeeded Wren as architect, completing the project to Wren's original design. It was later converted to the Royal Naval College.
Hampton Court Palace
The palace at Hampton court along with St. Paul’s is one of the most spectacular buildings Wren ever designed. Built in the baroque style for King William III and Queen Mary II at the end of the 17th century the palace is another of Wren’s impressive, building designs.
Kensington Palace
In 1689, Wren was asked by William III and his wife Mary II to renovate and expand a property then known under the name Nottingham House. He reoriented the house to face westward and added two entire wings to the building. Wren made only one journey out of England, a visit of several months to France in 1665 to study the French Renaissance and baroque architecture. And perhaps to also escape the plague of 1665 that befell London. The French journey had significant influence on his work and provided him with a deep source of inspiration. It was in Paris that he met another Great Westman, Gian Lorenzo Berini, the Italian architect and sculptor. Bernini was in Paris to work as an architect for King Louis XIV, to complete work on the royal palace of the Louvre. Not much is known about their meeting other than Wren reviewed Berini’s drawings and the two discussed baroque design. If you survived the Great Plague of 1665 you probably thought that 1666 could only end better. That was not to be the case.
A fire started on September 2nd in the King’s bakery in Pudding Lane near London Bridge. Fires were quite a common in those days and were quickly put out. And, when the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth was woken up to be told about the fire, he replied “Well, A woman might piss it out!”. However that summer had been very hot and there had been no rain for weeks, so the wooden houses and buildings were tinder dry. Once the fire started there was no stopping it. A strong east wind spread the flames, jumping from house to house. Streets were a narrow rabbit warren maze of wooden Tudor structures that were so densely packed that the roof tops sometimes touched one another. Efforts to control the fire using bucket brigades quickly failed. Chaos and panic reigned supreme. As a last resort gunpowder was used to blow up houses that lay in the path of the fire to create fire breaks the fire could not jump. Amid the chaos of the fire the sound of the explosions started rumours that a French invasion was taking place…. even more panic!!
The fire was finally extinguished on September 6th. The bad news, 4/5ths of London was destroyed, gone. Hundreds of thousands of people left homeless, 13,000 private dwellings destroyed. The good news: The fire burned out most of the black rats and fleas that were spreading the plague. Christopher Wren was appointed surveyor of Works and given the task of re-building London, this would include his masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral