1632-1723

English polymath who, after the great fire of London (1666), designed the new St. Paul's Cathedral and over 50 churches. He also designed the Greenwich Observatory. Wren was a charter member of the Royal Society, becoming that body's president in 1680. He produced the first lunar globe (1661), determined the arc length and center of gravity for the cycloid (1658), independently established conservation of momentum (1668), and proposed a unit of length based on pendulum oscillations (1673).