Life

Born at Pepperharrow, near Godalming

Godalming

Godalming is a town and civil parish in the Waverley district of the county of Surrey, England, south of Guildford. It is built on the banks of the River Wey and is a prosperous part of the London commuter belt. Godalming shares a three-way twinning arrangement with the towns of Joigny in France...

 in Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

, in 1621 or 1622, was the son of Robert Wood (d. 1661), rector of Pepperharrow. He was educated at Eton College

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

, and matriculated from New Inn Hall on 3 July 1640. Obtaining one of the Eton postmasterships at Merton College in 1642, he graduated B. A. from that college on 18 March 1646–7, proceeded M.A. on 14 July 1649, and was elected a fellow of Lincoln College

Lincoln College, Oxford

Lincoln College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is situated on Turl Street in central Oxford, backing onto Brasenose College and adjacent to Exeter College...

 by order of the parliamentary commissioners, on 19 September 1650, in the place of Thankfull Owen.

After studying physic for six years he was licensed to practise by convocation on 10 April 1656. He associated with the ‘Oxford club’ around John Wilkins

John Wilkins

John Wilkins FRS was an English clergyman, natural philosopher and author, as well as a founder of the Invisible College and one of the founders of the Royal Society, and Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death....

 of Wadham College. On a visit to Samuel Hartlib

Samuel Hartlib

Samuel Hartlib was a German-British polymath. An active promoter and expert writer in many fields, he was interested in science, medicine, agriculture, politics, and education. He settled in England, where he married and died...

 in 1658 he described how he had been assigned a task related to the cataloguing of the Bodleian Library

Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...

, one of the interests of the time of the ‘club’, which was a precursor to the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

. Wood was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, but much later (6 April 1681). Wood had contacted Hartlib in 1656 with a scheme for currency reform to decimal coinage, and was drawn into the Hartlib circle

Hartlib Circle

The Hartlib Circle refers primarily to the correspondence network set up in Western and Central Europe by Samuel Hartlib, an intelligencer based in London, and his associates, in the period 1630 to 1660.-Structure:J. T. Young writes:...

 of correspondents.

He went to Ireland and became a retainer of Henry Cromwell

Henry Cromwell

Henry Cromwell was the fourth son of Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth Bourchier, and an important figure in the Parliamentarian regime in Ireland.-Life:...

, who dispatched him to Scotland to ascertain the state of affairs there. On his return to England he became one of the first fellows of the Durham College

Durham College (17th-century)

New College, Durham was a university institution set up by Oliver Cromwell, to provide an alternative to the older University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. It also had the aim of bringing university education to Northern England. The idea met with opponents, including John Conant.Such a...

 founded by Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

. He was a prominent supporter of the Commonwealth, and a frequenter of the Rota Club formed by James Harrington.

On the Restoration

English Restoration

The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 he was deprived of his fellowship at Lincoln College and returned to Ireland, where he professed loyalty, graduated M.D., and became chancellor of the diocese of Meath

Diocese of Meath

The Diocese of Meath is an Irish diocese which took its name after the ancient Kingdom of Meath. In the Roman Catholic Church it still exists as a separate diocese, but in the Church of Ireland it has been united with other dioceses.-History:...

. He purchased an estate in Ireland, which, he afterwards sold in order to buy one at Sherwill in Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

. On his return to England he became mathematical master at Christ's Hospital, but after some years he resigned the post and paid a third visit to Ireland, where he was made a commissioner of the revenue, and finally accountant-general. This office he retained until his death, at Dublin, on 9 April 1685. He was buried in St. Michael's Church. He married Miss Adams, by whom he had three daughters Catherine, Martha, and Frances.

Works

He was the author of A New Al-moon-ac for Ever; or a Rectified Account of Time, London, 1680; and of another tract, entitled The Times Mended; or a Rectified Account of Time by a New Luni-Solar Year; the true way to Number our Days, London, 1681. In these treatises, which were dedicated to the Order of the Garter

Order of the Garter

The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...

, and sometimes accompanied by a single folio sheet entitled Novus Annus Luni-solaris,'he proposed to rectify the year so that the first day of the month should always be within a day of the change of the moon, while by a system of compensations the length of the year should be kept within a week of the period of rotation round the sun.

Wood translated the greater part of William Oughtred

William Oughtred

William Oughtred was an English mathematician.After John Napier invented logarithms, and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales upon which slide rules are based, it was Oughtred who first used two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division; and he is...

's Clavis Mathematica into English; he had been one of Oughtred's pupils. He published two papers in the Philosophical Transactions in 1681.