Skip to main content

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,...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Selected Reference

  • Wilson, Curtis (1989). Astronomy from Kepler to Newton. London: Variorum Reprints.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints 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

Publish with us

Policies and ethics