Robert Plot
Robert Plot (13 December 1640 – April 30, 1696) was an English naturalist, first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum.
Born in Borden, Kent, he was educated and subsequently taught at Magdalen Hall, Oxford before moving to University College in 1676.[1] He was a mature commoner at University College and donated a statue of King Alfred to the College (erroneously believed to be the founder of the College).
Plot is known for looking for natural curiosities in several English counties, and for writing The Natural History of Oxford-shire (1677) in which he described the fossilised femur of a giant (now known to be from the dinosaur Megalosaurus) and The Natural History of Staffordshire (1686), in which he describes a double sunset viewable from Leek[2] and the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance.
In 1677, he became a fellow of the Royal Society as a result of his exhibition of minerals, and in 1682 became the society's Secretary, and joint editor of the Philosophical Transactions (144–178).[1] In the field of chemistry he searched for a universal solvent that could be obtained from wine spirits, and believed that alchemy was necessary for medicine. After 1686, Plot focused more on archaeology, but misinterpreted Roman remains as Saxon. He stressed the unusual; he studied echoes in order to learn about air, mineral waters, and recognised types of earth in layers, but believed that fossil shellfish were coincidental mineral crystallisations, and that some spring water must originate from the sea flowing through underground channels.[3]
This office of Mowbray Herald Extraordinary was created in January 1695 for Plot, who was made Registrar of the College of Arms just two days later.[4]
Plot died in Borden, the village of his birth.
[edit] Notes and references
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- ^ a b Turner, A. J. (2004). "Plot, Robert (bap. 1640, d. 1696)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22385. Retrieved 2011-03-29. subscription or UK public library membership required
- ^ "Dr. Plot and the Amazing Double Sunset". leekonline.co.uk. http://www.leekonline.co.uk/sunset/. Retrieved 27 March 2005.
- ^ Plot 1705 Page 144: §. 155. Here it may be remembered that 'tis possible, that Shells found on the Tops of Mountains, may be brought thither by the Fall of Spouts. vid. Nat. Hist. of Staff. Chap. 7. §. 45. And that real Shells found deep in the Earth, may be brought thither by the vast Subterraneous Indraughts coming from the Sea, which occasion Springs, see Mercurius Centralis and Nat. Hist. of Stafford-shire, Chap. 2. §. 71, 72.
- ^ Turner, Anthony (Autumn 1996). "Robert Plot (1640–1696)". Sphæra: the newsletter of the Museum of the History of Science (Oxford) (4). http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/sphaera/index.htm?issue4/articl6. Retrieved 2008-01-23.
- Plot, Robert (1705). The Natural History of Oxford-shire: Being an Essay Towards the Natural History of England (2nd ed.). Oxford: Printed by Leon. Lichfield. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=J8wQAAAAIAAJ.
- "Dictionary of Scientific Biography". Linda Hall Library. http://www.chlt.org/sandbox/lhl/dsb/page.40.php?size=240x320. Retrieved 27 March 2005.
- "Robert Plot". Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Archived from the original on 2004-12-29. http://web.archive.org/web/20041229000149/http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/geocolls/plot/plotbib.htm. Retrieved 2011-03-29.
[edit] External links
- Robert Plot from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
