BRITAIN AND FRANCE. l6TH TO l8TH CENTURY
Wren's father had been Dean of Windsor, his father's brother
Bishop of Ely. He was sent to Westminster School. At the age of
fifteen, after he had finished school, he was made an assistant de-
monstrator in anatomy at the College of Surgeons. Then he went
up to Oxford. His main interest was science, in that curious mixed
and vague sense which science still had in the mid-iyth century.
During the time he was at college, "that miracle of a youth", as
John Evelyn called him, put before the authorities fifty-three in-
ventions, theories, experiments and mechanical improvements.
Some of them seem trifling now, others aimed right at the central
problems of astronomy, physics and engineering. In 1657 he was
made professor of astronomy in London, in 1661 in Oxford. It
was the moment when experimental science was just coming to the
fore everywhere in Europe. In Paris the Royal Academy of Science
was established. The Royal Society in London started its activities
even earlier. Wren was one of its founders and most distinguished
members. Newton calls him together with Huygens and Wallis
"huius setatis geometrarum facile principes". His most important
scientific work is on cycloids, the barometer and Pascal's problem.
In his inaugural lecture in London he revealed a prophetic vision of
nebulae as the firmaments of other worlds like ours. In 1664 he
illustrated Willis's Anatomy of the Brain. And in 1663 he presented
to the Royal Society a model for a building which he had designed
at the request of Oxford University, the Sheldonian Theatre, com-
pleted in 1669. Its roof is an ingenious piece of timber engineering,
but its architecture is awkward, evidently the work of a man with
little designing experience. The same can be said of his second work,
Pembroke Chapel, Cambridge, of 1663-66. An even earlier con-
nection with building construction is indicated by Charles II's re-
quest to him to fortify Tangier. So architecture, engineering,
physics and mathematics go hand in hand in the development of
Wren's mind. The resolution to specialise in architecture may have
been brought about by the Fire of London in 1666. Wren found
himself a member of the Royal Commission for the rebuilding
of the city, and very soon also the elected designer of the many
new churches to be built in the city, including St. Caul's. In 1669
die King made him Surveyor-General. His only important journey
abroad took him not to Italy but to Paris. That is a very significant
fact. At the time of Inigo Jones's Wanderjahre, Paris could not have
been more than a station on the way to Rome. Now Wren, in a
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