When the transit of June 3, 1769, was approaching he delivered two lectures on the coming phenomenon, which were published. Dr. Maskelyne, then astronomer royal of England, desired that Prof. Winthrop should go to the neighborhood of Lake Superior, where the whole of this transit would be visible, but his health would not admit of this. Accordingly, he saw only the beginning of the passage, as at Cambridge the sun set before it was finished. Prof. Winthrop observed the transit of Mercury January 20, 1763, and prepared an account of it for the Memoirs of the American Academy of Sciences (vol. i, p. 57), of which society he was one of the founders.
As a mathematician and astronomer Prof. Winthrop had no equal in the American colonies, and his fellowship of the Royal Society, together with the degree of LL. D. which he received from the University of Edinburgh in 1771, attests his reputation in the mother-country. Prof. Lovering states that his views of the nature of heat were greatly in advance of the science of his day. His scholarship, moreover, was not limited to his specialty. He wrote Latin with purity and elegance, studied the Scriptures critically in their original languages, and was well versed in the tongues of modern Europe. "He is, perhaps," says Quincy, "better entitled to the character of a universal scholar than any individual of his time in this country." Rev. Charles Chauncy, D. D., in A Sketch of Eminent Men in New England, written in 1768, says: "Mr. Winthrop, Hollisian professor, I have been very free and intimate with. He is by far the greatest man at the college in Cambridge. Had he been of a pushing genius and a disposition to make a figure in the world, he might have done it to his own honour, as well as the honour of the college."[1]
The office of a professor in Harvard College during the last century was not a lucrative one. The salaries obtained were fluctuating and always small. From about the middle of the century the Professor of Mathematics and Physics received £80 a year. In reply to inquiries made by a committee of the Provincial Legislature, Winthrop wrote a letter in which he stated that his salary had been far from adequate, and that he had run in debt for the support of his family.
Prof. Winthrop married, August 22, 1746, Rebecca, daughter of James Townsend, of Boston, and by this marriage had five sons. His wife died after seven years, and he married again in 1756. His second wife was Hannah, daughter of Thomas Fayerweather, and widow of Farr Tolman, of Boston. She was the well-known correspondent of Mrs. John Adams.
The first vacancy in the presidency of Harvard College that
- ↑ Massachusetts Historical Society's Collections, Series I, vol. x, p. 159.
