William Croone

At their first meeting after they had formed themselves into a regular body, on 28 November 1660, he was appointed their registrar, and he continued in that office till the grant of their charter, by which John Wilkins and Henry Oldenburg were nominated joint secretaries.

The Company of Surgeons appointed him, on 28 August 1670, their anatomy lecturer on the muscles, in succession to Sir Charles Scarborough, and he held that office till his death.

He published ‘De ratione motus Musculorum,’ London, 1664, and Amsterdam, 1667; and read papers to the Royal Society, including ‘A Discourse on the Conformation of a Chick in the Egg before Incubation’ (28 March 1671).

Dr. Goodall states that Croone ‘had made most ingenious and excellent observations de ovo, long before Malpighius's book upon that subject was extant.’ He was the founder of the Croonian Lectures.

Croone left behind him a plan for two lectureships: one lecture was to be read before the College of Physicians, with a sermon to be preached at the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, the other to be delivered yearly before the Royal Society upon the nature and laws of muscular motion.

Lady Sadleir (as she became) also, out of regard for the memory of her first husband, William Croone, provided for the establishment of the algebra lectures which were afterwards founded at some colleges at Cambridge.