16 Facts About Thomas Linacre

Thomas Linacre was more of a scholar than a scientific investigator.

Thomas Linacre took no part in political or theological questions, but his career as a scholar was characteristic of the critical period in the history of learning through which he lived.

Thomas Linacre was one of the first Englishmen to study Greek in Italy, and brought back to his native country and his own university the lessons of the "New Learning".

Thomas Linacre's teachers were some of the greatest scholars of the day.

Thomas Linacre was born at Brampton, Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, descended from an ancient family recorded in the Domesday Book.

Thomas Linacre received his early education at the Canterbury Cathedral school, under the direction of William Tilly of Selling, who became prior of Canterbury in 1472.

Thomas Linacre entered Oxford in about 1480, and in 1484 was elected a fellow of All Souls College.

Thomas Linacre took the degree of doctor of medicine with great distinction at Padua.

Thomas Linacre's ordination was connected with his retirement from active life.

The most important service Thomas Linacre conferred upon his own profession and science was the foundation by royal charter of the College of Physicians in London, and he was the first president of the new college, which he further aided by bequeathing to it his own house and library.

Shortly before his death, Thomas Linacre obtained from the king letters patent for the establishment of readerships in medicine at Oxford and Cambridge, and placed valuable estates in the hands of trustees for their endowment.

Thomas Linacre is listed on a modern monument in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral in London as one of the important graves lost in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Thomas Linacre translated with extraordinary eloquence many of Galen's works into Latin; and published, a little before his death, at the request of his friends, a very valuable book on the correct structure of the Latin tongue.

Thomas Linacre founded in perpetuity in favour of students in physick, two public lectures at Oxford, and one at Cambridge.

Thomas Linacre desired to make the works of Galen accessible to all readers of Latin.

The materials for Thomas Linacre's biography are to a large extent contained in the older biographical collections of George Lily, John Bale, John Leland and Pits, in Anthony Wood's Athenae Oxonienses and in the Biographia Britannica.