Thomas Flatman, Unlikely First FRS of ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ
Issue number
(2023): 20
Notes category
Thomas Flatman (1635–1688), sometime of ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ, had three occupations, which he practised to very different standards: law, poetry, and painting. In 1668 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He was proposed by the FRS and antiquary John Aubrey, renowned today as one of the creators of modern biography, but in his time better known as an experimental philosopher with a particular interest in mathematics and what we now call archaeology, especially the study of megaliths. Flatman is the earliest ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ FRS. In that role, however, he was totally and utterly inactive. Although elected, he was never formally admitted, and so cannot even be shown to have attended a single meeting; it has to be said that Aubrey’s proposal was a flop.
Portrait of a man (tempera) by Thomas Flatman, New College, Oxford, NCO 292162