A brilliant mathematician who lost his university chair for questioning the Holy Trinity.

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: William Whiston succeeded Isaac Newton as Lucasian professor at Cambridge, yet his career collapsed when he publicly challenged the doctrine of the Trinity. A pioneer of experimental physics and scientific biblical interpretation, Whiston spent his later years as a London public lecturer, chasing the elusive solution to the longitude problem.

Born in 1667, William Whiston was a gifted mathematician who rose through the ranks at Cambridge, eventually succeeding his mentor, Isaac Newton, as Lucasian professor in 1702. His early career was marked by a fascination with blending natural philosophy and theology. In his 1696 work, A New Theory of the Earth, he applied Newtonian physics to explain biblical events, famously proposing that the Great Flood was triggered by a comet. This approach, which sought to ground scripture in scientific reality, was widely read and even influenced contemporary thinkers like Buffon.

Whiston’s downfall began when his theological investigations led him to reject the Trinity, a stance he shared with Newton but expressed with far less caution. By 1709, he was openly publishing these views. His refusal to recant resulted in his expulsion from Cambridge in 1710. Though he faced a heresy trial in London, the proceedings were eventually dropped following the death of Queen Anne. Stripped of his academic position, Whiston reinvented himself as a public educator in London, partnering with Francis Hauksbee to demonstrate mechanics and optics in coffee-houses.

Beyond his religious controversies, Whiston was a tireless advocate for scientific progress. In 1714, he was a key figure in lobbying Parliament to pass the Longitude Act, which offered rewards for solving the problem of determining longitude at sea. He proposed several methods, including the use of star shells fired from stationary vessels. While he never claimed the prize, his work in magnetic inclination—producing the first known maps of the phenomenon for south-eastern England in 1719 and 1720—demonstrated his enduring commitment to empirical inquiry. He died in 1752, leaving behind a legacy as a complex, often polarizing figure who navigated the volatile intersection of science and faith.

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