[1] Educated as a queen's scholar at Westminster School, he was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1650, admitted as a pensioner on 17 June 1650.
[4] Admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667,[1] on 7 November 1672 Needham was appointed physician to Sutton's Charity (the London Charterhouse) in succession to George Castle.
He was created a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians under the charter of James II, and was admitted on 12 April 1687.
[2] On 4 August 1667 Needham's Disquisitio anatomica de formato Fœtu was licensed to be printed; in this book he states that he was then living a long way from London.
It was reprinted at Amsterdam in 1668, and was included by Daniel Le Clerc and Jean-Jacques Manget in their Bibliotheca Anatomica (1699).
[5] In 1673 Needham read a paper before the Royal Society giving the results of some experiments he had made with Richard Wiseman.