Bainbridge, John

John Bainbridge, (born 1582, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, Eng.—died Nov. 3, 1643, Oxford, Oxfordshire), astronomer noted for his observations of comets.

Bainbridge practiced medicine at Ashby-de-la-Zouch from 1614 to 1618. Soon after he moved to London, he was appointed (1619) Savilian professor of astronomy at the University of Oxford, largely on the basis of his Astronomical Description of the Comet of 1618 (1619). Although this work accepted to a point the superstitious belief that comets appear as signs of impending disaster, in Antiprognosticon (1642) he recanted and vigorously denounced astrological superstition that based predictions on conjunctions of the planets and appearances of comets. His other publication includes the translation of ancient Greek astronomical works: Procli Sphaera et Ptolomaei de Hypothesibus Planetarum (1620; “The Sphere of Proclus and Ptolemy’s ‘On the Hypotheses of Planets’”). Ptolemy’s book was an influential cosmological work of the 2nd century ad; the Sphere, an elementary teaching text falsely attributed to Proclus, consists of several chapters of Geminus’s Introduction to the Phenomena (1st century bc).