Thomas Lowndes

Thomas Lowndes may refer to:

Thomas Lowndes (congressman)

Thomas Lowndes (January 22, 1766 – July 8, 1843) was an American lawyer and statesman from Charleston, South Carolina. Educated in Charleston, he studied law there and became a practicing lawyer in the city in the late 18th century. He was a member of the state legislature from 1792 to 1799. He represented South Carolina's 1st Congressional District in the U.S. Congress from March 4, 1801 to March 3, 1805. He was not re-elected in 1804. He failed to win back his seat in 1808, and retired from public life thereafter. He died in Charleston in 1843.

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Thomas Lowndes (astronomer)

Thomas Lowndes (1692 – May 12, 1748) was the founder of the Lowndean professorship of astronomy at Cambridge University, England.

Both his father and mother were Cheshire landowners. In 1725 he was appointed provost marshal of South Carolina, a post he preferred to hold by deputy. In 1727 Lowndes claimed to have taken a prominent part in inducing the British government to purchase Carolina, but he surrendered his patent when the transfer of the colony to the crown was completed. His patent was renewed in 1730, but he resigned it in 1733.

He then brought various impractical schemes before the government to check the illicit trade in wool between Ireland and France; to regulate the paper currency of New England; and to supply the navy with salt from brine, etc. By his will he left his inherited Cheshire properties to the University of Cambridge for the foundation of a chair of astronomy and geometry.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.