The Professor of Physic at Gresham College, London, gives free educational lectures to the general public, typically on medicine, health and related sciences. The college was founded for this purpose in 1597, when it created seven professorships; this was later increased to ten. Physic (the common term for medicine in this period) is one of the original professorships as set out by the will of Sir Thomas Gresham in 1575. The Professor of Physic is appointed in partnership with the Worshipful Company of Mercers.[1]
Past Professors of Physic have included leading figures in medicine, public health, surgery and clinical science, such as Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle. Additionally, other eminent medical scientists and physicians were Gresham Professors of other disciplines, like Sir William Petty, one of the founders of demography, who served as Professor of Music from 1651.