Mark Ridley

Who was Mark Ridley?

Dr. Mark Ridley was an English physician, born in Stretham, Cambridgeshire, to Lancelot Ridley. He became physician to the English merchants in Russia, and then personal physician to the Tsar of Russia. While there, ca. 1594–1599, he compiled a Russian-English, English-Russian dictionary, which is now to be found in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. He also wrote on magnetism.

Whilst Ridley's dictionary is more original, he is best known as an innovative follower of Dr William Gilbert and the magnetic science that Gilbert published in his De Magnete of 1600. Until Gilbert's death in 1603 Ridley had lodged with him in Wingfield House, London. In 1613 Ridley published his Magneticall Bodies and Motions, the first printed work in English to promote Gilbert's ideas. Ridley was attacked by the conservative Revd William Barlow, for advancing Gilbert's Copernican astronomy and also, in Barlow's opinion, for plagiarizing his own version in English of Gilbert's magnetic science.