Thomas Lydiat

Who was Thomas Lydiat?

Thomas Lydiat was a clergyman and mathematician in England. In his time he was noted as a chronologer and was an opponent in controversy of Scaliger. He is now considered, albeit in a very different type of theory, to have provided in 1605 a clear suggestion of an oval orbit in astronomy, anticipating Johannes Kepler, with whom he also had a controversial exchange relating to chronology.

His contemporaries ranked him with Joseph Mede and Francis Bacon. His ultimate poverty, certainly exaggerated, furnished Samuel Johnson with an allusion in his poem on the Vanity of Human Wishes.