Abstract
Richard Helsham (1682?-1738), was an 18th century Dublin medical doctor, a well-known public figure, and a personal physician to Jonathan Swift, the writer of Gulliver's travels. In 1710 Trinity College Dublin established a new medical school and laboratory where Helsham lectured unofficially from 1711, and without payment, on natural philosophy. In 1724 the college rewarded him by appointing him the first holder of the new Professorship of Natural and Experimental Philosophy. Following his death in 1738, his pupil Bryan Robinson, another medical doctor, published in 1739 Helsham's course of lectures. Robinson added a preface - quoting Newton on methodology in physics - and appendices which derived some of Helsham's results in more mathematical detail. This went through eight editions (in Dublin, London and Philadelphia, with the last edition in 1834), becoming a popular university physics textbook for almost a century. This well produced re-publication is a welcome contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the history of science in Ireland.
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