His uncle, Sir George Ludlam, was Chamberlain of the city of London, and died in 1726.
[1] Ludlam, after attending Leicester grammar school, became scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge, and was elected to a fellowship in 1744.
He enjoyed a reputation at the time for his skill in practical mechanics and astronomy, as well as for his mathematical lectures.
[1] In 1768, having accepted from his college the rectory of Cockfield in Suffolk, thereby vacating his fellowship, Ludlam removed to Leicester, where he spent the remaining twenty years of his life.
[4] Ludlam died on 16 March 1788, and was commemorated in a tablet on the south wall of St. Mary's.
[1] Ludlam may have contributed in early life to the Monthly Review, but most of his writings were in his time at Leicester.
His Rudiments of Mathematics (1785) became a standard Cambridge text-book, passed through several editions, and was still in vogue in 1815[citation needed].
In Essay on Newton's Second Law of Motion (1780),[5] Ludlam suggested an explicit statement of the physical independence of forces.
In the two essays which were issued in the year of his death appear strictures on certain passages in Joseph Milner's Tract in Answer to Gibbon.
[8] Of a numerous family only two sons survived Ludlam; of these the elder, Thomas Ludlam (1775–1810), after serving an apprenticeship to a printer, entered the service of the Sierra Leone Company, and going out to the colony became a member of the council, and twice governor for the company.