Thomas Plume
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The Reverend Doctor Thomas Plume, B.A., D.D. (1630 – 20 November 1704) was an English churchman and philanthropist.
He was born in 1630 in Maldon, Essex and educated at Chelmsford, Essex, and Christ's College, Cambridge. In 1658 he was appointed Vicar of East Greenwich, Kent, in 1662 Rector of Merston, Sussex, and in 1665 Rector of Little Easton, Essex. From 1679 until his death, unmarried, on 20 November 1704, Thomas Plume was Archdeacon of Rochester, Kent. He was buried at Longfield, Kent.
[edit] Plume Library
Thomas Plume left his collection of 7,000 books, printed between 1470 and his death, to the town of Maldon. The Plume Library is located in St. Peter's Church, of which only the original Tower survives; the rest of the building was rebuilt by Plume to house his library. The collection has been added to several times since 1704.
[edit] Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy
In 1704 Thomas Plume founded the chair of Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in order to "erect an Observatory and to maintain a studious and learned Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy, and to buy him and his successors utensils and instruments quadrants telescopes etc".
[edit] Sources
- H. R. French, ‘Plume, Thomas (bap. 1630, d. 1704)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 10 Sept 2006
