Scientific Lives

John Aubrey, born in 1626 near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, was the eldest son of a gentry family. Educated at Malmesbury Grammar School, where he befriended Thomas Hobbes, he later attended Trinity College, Oxford, though his studies were disrupted by the English Civil War. An antiquary and original fellow of the Royal Society, Aubrey is noted for discovering the ruins of Avebury and his archaeological research. He mingled with prominent figures of his time and is best remembered for Brief Lives, a collection of biographical notes and anecdotes. He died in 1697 and was buried in Oxford.