In the 1640s, he took instruction in mathematics from William Oughtred, and stayed with relations of Samuel Ward.
In 1649 he became Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford University, and gained a high reputation by his theory of planetary motion. It was propounded in the works entitled In Ismaelis Bullialdi astro-nomiae philolaicae fundamenta inquisitio brevis (Oxford, 1653), against the cosmology of Ismael Boulliau, and Astronomia geometrica (London, 1656) on the system of Kepler. About this time he was engaged in a philosophical controversy with Thomas Hobbes, in fact a small part of the debate with John Webster launched by the Vindiciae academiarum he wrote with John Wilkins which also... Read More