William Derham FRS (26 November 16575 April 1735)Smolenaars, Marja.
Derham, William (1657–1735)
, ''

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'',

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, 2004. Accessed 26 May 2007. was an English clergyman, natural theologian, natural philosopher and

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosop ...

. He produced the earliest reasonably accurate measurement of the

speed of sound The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. At , the speed of sound in air is about , or one kilometre in or one mile in . It depends strongly on temperature as we ...

Life

William Derham was the son of Thomas Derham. He was born at

Stoulton Stoulton or Stoughton is a village and civil parish about 5 miles south west of Worcester, in the Wychavon district, in the county of Worcestershire, England. The parish includes the hamlet of Hawbridge. In 2011 the parish had a population of ...

, in Worcestershire, England. He was educated at

Blockley Blockley is a village, civil parish and ecclesiastical parish in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England, about northwest of Moreton-in-Marsh. Until 1931 Blockley was an exclave of Worcestershire. The civil and ecclesiastical par ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of ...

, and at Trinity College, Oxford, from 1675 to 1679. He was ordained on 29 May 1681. In 1682, he became vicar of Wargrave, Berkshire, and from 1689 to 1735 he was Rector at Upminster,

Essex Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...

. While at Upminster, in 1716 he became a

Canon of Windsor The Dean and Canons of Windsor are the ecclesiastical body of St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. Foundation The college of canons was established in 1348 by Letters Patent of King Edward III. It was formally constituted on the feast of S ...

and the vestry minutes show that thereafter he divided his time between those two places. The parish registers of Upminster record his burial at St. Laurence's in 1735. However, the precise site of his grave is unknown and, in accordance with his wishes, there is no memorial to him in the church.

Work

Title page of Physico-Theology by William Derham 1713 (this ed 1723)

In 1696, he published his ''Artificial Clockmaker'', which went through several editions. The best known of his subsequent works are ''Physico-Theology'', published in 1713; ''Astro-Theology'', 1714; and ''Christo-Theology'', 1730. All three of these books are teleological arguments for the being and attributes of God, and were used by

William Paley William Paley (July 174325 May 1805) was an English clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work ''Natu ...

nearly a century later. However, these books also include quantities of original scientific observations. For example, ''Physico-Theology'' contains his recognition of natural variation within species and that he knew that ''Didelphis virginialis'' (the Virginia opossum) was the only marsupial in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

. It also includes one of the earliest theoretical descriptions of a

marine chronometer A marine chronometer is a precision timepiece that is carried on a ship and employed in the determination of the ship's position by celestial navigation. It is used to determine longitude by comparing Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), or in the mode ...

, accompanied by a discussion of the use of vacuum seals to reduce inaccuracies in the operation of timepieces. He is the first person known to have used the word ''chronometer''. Similarly, ''Astro-Theology'' includes several newly identified nebulae (this was the name used at the time for all extended astronomical objects: some of his nebulae are what we would now call

star cluster Star clusters are large groups of stars. Two main types of star clusters can be distinguished: globular clusters are tight groups of ten thousand to millions of old stars which are gravitationally bound, while open clusters are more loosely cl ...

s). His telescope (also used when measuring the velocity of sound) was at the top of the tower of St Laurence's Church, where the necessary doors are still in place. On 3 February 1703, Derham was elected

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemati ...

. He was Boyle lecturer in 1711–1712. His last known work, entitled ''A Defence of the Church's Right in Leasehold Estates'', appeared as early as 1731. But besides the works published in his own name, Derham contributed a variety of papers to the ''Transactions of the Royal Society''. He revised the ''Miscellanea Curiosa''. He edited the correspondence and wrote a biography of John Ray, whose 'physico-theology' ( natural theology) tradition he continued, making him an early parson-naturalist. He edited Eleazar Albin's ''Natural History'', and published some of the manuscripts of the scientist Robert Hooke. His meteorological observations at Upminster (in the '' Transactions of the Royal Society'') are amongst the earliest series in England.

Speed of sound

In 1709 Derham published a more accurate measure of the speed of sound, at 1,072 Parisian feet per second. Derham used a telescope from the tower of the

church of St Laurence, Upminster The church of St Laurence, Upminster, is the Church of England parish church in Upminster, England. It is a Grade I listed building. It is the historic minster or church from which Upminster derives its name, meaning 'upper church', probably sig ...

, to observe the flash of a distant shotgun being fired, and then measured the time until he heard the gunshot with a half second pendulum. Measurements were made of gunshots from local landmarks including the Church of St Mary Magdalene, North Ockendon. The distance was known by triangulation, and thus the speed that the sound had travelled could be calculated.

Works

* ''The Artificial Clockmaker'' (1696) **--
(1734 edition)

''Physico-theology, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God''
(1723 edition)
''Christo-Theology: Or, a Demonstration of the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion''
(1730 edition) * ''A defence of the churches right in leasehold estate'', London: W. Innys 1731.
''Astro-theology: or, A demonstration of the being and attributes of God, from a Survey of the Heavens''
(1731 edition)

References

External links