Samuel Foster

Samuel Foster (about 1600 to 1652) was an English mathematician and astronomer, a native of Northamptonshire who studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was elected Gresham Professor of Astronomy in 1636, resigned later that year, and was re-elected in 1641. He observed eclipses of the sun and moon at Gresham College and elsewhere and was known for inventing and improving planetary instruments. During the Civil War he belonged to the London circle that met to cultivate the new philosophy, and in 1646 he gave John Wallis a theorem on spherical triangles that Wallis later published in his Mechanica. He published little himself, but his treatises on the quadrant, dialling and horologiography, and a collection of Miscellanies, were printed after his death by editors including John Twysden and Edmund Wingate.