Born  probably Cork, Ireland, 15 March 1622
Died  Westminster, (London), England, 27 August 1689
Thomas Streete was an observational astronomer, a publisher of ephemerides, and introduced, through his writings, Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion to Isaac Newton. Streete was employed in London as a clerk in the Excise Office under Elias Ashmole. He had contacts with Gresham College, but little seems to be known about his education. He knew a number of the leading astronomers in England and abroad, and often assisted them in observations. Streete was careless about citing his sources, which led to accusations of plagiarism. Still, he published highly regarded ephemerides, worked on the problem of determining longitude at sea, and was engaged in the resurvey of London after the Great Fire of 1666.
Streete was very highly regarded in his own day as an astronomical observer. His tables, even if not described as the best, are regularly cited by Newton in the Principia. In 1661,...
Selected Reference
Wilson, Curtis (1989). Astronomy from Kepler to Newton. London: Variorum Reprints.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Goddu, A. (2007). Streete, Thomas. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1335
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1335
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-31022-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30400-7
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics