Thomas Willis
| Thomas Willis | |
|---|---|
Willis in 1667
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| Born | 27 January 1621 Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire |
| Died | 11 November 1675 (aged 54) London |
| Residence | United Kingdom |
| Fields |
Anatomy Neurology Psychiatry |
| Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
| Known for | Circle of Willis |
| Spouse | Mary Fell |
Thomas Willis (27 January 1621 – 11 November 1675) was an English doctor who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry. He was a founding member of the Royal Society.
Willis was born on his parents' farm in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, where his father held the stewardship of the Manor. He was a kinsman of the Willys baronets of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire. He graduated M.A. from Christ Church, Oxford in 1642. In the Civil War years he was a royalist, dispossessed of the family farm at North Hinksey by Parliamentary forces. In the 1640s Willis was one of the royal physicians to Charles I of England. Less grandly, once qualified B. Med. in 1646, he began as an active physician by regularly attending the market at Abingdon.
He maintained an Anglican position; an Anglican congregation met at his lodgings in the 1650s, including John Fell, John Dolben, and Richard Allestree. Fell's father Samuel Fell had been expelled as Dean of Christ Church, in 1647; Willis married Samuel Fell's daughter Mary, and brother-in-law John Fell would later be his biographer. He employed Robert Hooke as an assistant, in the period 1656-8; this probably was another Fell family connection, since Samuel Fell knew Hooke's father in Freshwater, Isle of Wight.
One of several Oxford cliques of those interested in science grew up around Willis and Christ Church. Besides Hooke, others in the group were Nathaniel Hodges, John Locke, Richard Lower, Henry Stubbe and John Ward. (Locke went on to study with Thomas Sydenham, who would become Willis's leading rival, and who both politically and medically held some incompatible views.) In the broader Oxford scene, he was a colleague in the "Oxford club" of experimentalists with Ralph Bathurst, Robert Boyle, William Petty, John Wilkins and Christopher Wren. Willis was on close terms with Wren's sister Susan Holder, skilled in the healing of wounds.
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