# Simon Bredon

> Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Simon_Bredon
> Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Simon_Bredon.md
> Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bredon
> Source revision: 1275621805
> License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

**Simon Bredon** (c. 1300 – 1372) was an English [astronomer](/source/Astronomer), [mathematician](/source/Mathematician), and [physician](/source/Physician) and [priest](/source/Priest). He was a member of the [Merton School](/source/Merton_School), [Oxford](/source/Oxford), elected a Fellow of [Merton](/source/Merton_College,_Oxford) c. 1330, perhaps until the year 1342, having formerly been a member of Balliol. He was a [Doctor of Medicine](/source/Doctor_of_Medicine) of the [University of Oxford](/source/University_of_Oxford). He left manuscripts and scientific instruments to a number of Oxford colleges, perhaps including the bequest of the [Oriel](/source/Oriel_College,_Oxford) astrolabe (c. 1340), which is now in the [Museum of the History of Science](/source/Museum_of_the_History_of_Science).

He was one of the earliest European mathematicians to work on [trigonometry](/source/Trigonometry).

Authorship of the treatise *[The equatorie of the planetis](/source/The_equatorie_of_the_planetis)* has been attributed to Bredon, though also to [Geoffrey Chaucer](/source/Geoffrey_Chaucer) or another contemporary. The *[Theorica planetarum](/source/Theorica_planetarum)* in the past attributed to him is now thought to be by [Walter Brit](/source/Walter_Brit).[1]

## Bibliography

- Larry D. Benson, *The Riverside Chaucer* (3rd edn., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987)
- Robert T. Gunther, *Historic Instruments for the Advancement of Science: A Handbook to the Oxford Collections Prepared for the Opening of the Lewis Evans Collection on May 5, 1925* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925), pp. 19–20
- Derek J. Price, ed., *The equatorie of the planetis* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955)
- F. N. Robinson, *The works of Geoffrey Chaucer* (2nd edn., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957)
- Keith Snedegar, 'Simon Bredon, a Fourteenth-Century Astronomer and Physician', in Lodi Nauta and Arjo Vanderjagt, eds., *Between Demonstration and Imagination* (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 285–309
- C. H. Talbot, 'Simon Bredon (c. 1300–1372), Physician, Mathematician and Astronomer', *British Journal for the History of Science* 1 (1962), 19–30

## References

1. Molland, George. "Bredon, Simon". 52668.

## External links

- [*Exhibition: The Astrolabe, East and West*](http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/astrolabe/exhibition/oxford.htm)

---
Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Simon Bredon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bredon) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bredon?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.