Thomas Lydiat

Thomas Lydiat, born at Alkerton in Oxfordshire in 1572 and dead on 3 April 1646, was an English clergyman and mathematician, noted in his time as a chronologer and as an opponent in controversy of Joseph Justus Scaliger. He is now considered to have provided in 1605, in a very different kind of theory, a clear suggestion of an oval orbit in astronomy, anticipating Johannes Kepler, with whom he also had a controversial exchange about chronology. A scholar of Winchester College and fellow of New College, Oxford, he gave up divinity and his fellowship in 1603 because of a defective memory and speech and devoted himself to mathematics and chronology. In 1609 he dedicated his Emendatio Temporum to Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who appointed him his chronographer and cosmographer.