Peter Turner

Peter Turner, who lived from 1586 to 1652, was an English mathematician. He matriculated at St Mary Hall, Oxford, in 1600, graduated M.A. at Christ Church in 1605 and became a fellow of Merton College in 1607. He gave public lectures as professor of geometry at Gresham College, London, from 1620 to 1630, and was an ally of William Laud during his time as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, working with Brian Twyne on a revision of the statutes. He held the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford from 1631 to 1649. In 1641 he enlisted in the royalist forces of Lord Byron, was taken prisoner near Stow-on-the-Wold in an early skirmish of the First English Civil War and was released in a prisoner exchange in 1643. Ejected from his chair after the parliamentary visitation of 1648, he lived in poverty with his sister in Southwark.