1806
THE CAMERA LUCIDA
WILLIAM HYDE WOLLASTON(1766–1828)
Wollaston was born in East Dereham,
#Norfolk, England, the seventh of 17 children in a financially comfortable family well positioned in British scientific and religious circles.
His father was a vicar, a competent w of the Royal Society. He was educated at Charterhouse School, then studied at
#Gonville and
#CaiusCollege,
#Cambridge, obtaining his MD in medicine in 1793.
He practiced as a physician but was deeply unhappy in the role. In a letter to a lifelong friend, he wrote that "the practice of physic is not calculated to make me happy" and declared he had "fully determined" to give it up.
Around 1800 he abandoned medicine entirely. His contemporaries regarded him as the equal of Humphry Davy and
#ThomasYoung. His close scientific friends called him "the pope of science," and philosopher
#WilliamWhewell claimed that a conversation with Wollaston was "like talking to pure intelligence."
Among many other pursuits, he eventually facilitated the accurate sketching of objects through the Camera Lucida, a four-sided prism mounted on a small stand above a sheet of paper.
