Ralph Bathurst

Ralph Bathurst
Portrait of Bathurst, 1676, by David Loggan.
Born	1620 (1620) Hothorpe, Northamptonshire, England
Died	1704 (aged 83–84)
Alma mater	Trinity College, University of Oxford
Occupation	Theologian, physician
Title	Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford
Term	1673–1776
Predecessor	Peter Mews
Successor	Henry Clerke

Ralph Bathurst, FRS (1620 – 14 June 1704) was an English theologian and physician.

He was born in Hothorpe, Northamptonshire in 1620 and educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry.

He graduated with a B.A. degree from Trinity College, Oxford in 1638, where he had a family connection with the President, Ralph Kettell (1563–1643).

He originally intended a career in the Church of England, and was ordained in 1644, but his prospects were disrupted by the English Civil War, and he turned to medicine. He collaborated with Thomas Willis, and it was to Bathurst that Willis dedicated his first medical publication, the Diatribae Duae of 1659.

Bathurst was active in the intellectual ferment of the time, and very well connected. In the account given by John Wallis of the precursor groups to the Royal Society of London, Bathurst is mentioned as one of the Oxford experimentalists who gathered from 1648–9. Also in that group were Willis, William Petty and Seth Ward. The group expanded in the 1650s when it gathered around John Wilkins of Wadham College, close however to Oliver Cromwell, and then included also Jonathan Goddard, Thomas Millington, Laurence Rooke, and Christopher Wren. Later Robert Boyle joined.