Alexander Neckam

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Alexander Neckam (sometimes spelled "Nequam") (September 8, 1157–1217), was an English scientist and teacher.

He was born at St Albans, Hertfordshire, England, on the same night as King Richard I. Neckam's mother nursed the prince with her own son, who thus became Richard's foster-brother. He was educated at the St Albans Abbey school (now St Albans School), and began to teach as schoolmaster of Dunstable, dependent on St Albans Abbey. Later he lived for several years at Petit Pons in Paris (c. 1175-1182). By 1180 he had become a distinguished lecturer on the arts at the University of Paris.

By 1186 he was back in England, where he again held the place of schoolmaster, firstly at Dunstable in Bedfordshire and then as Master of St Albans School until about 1195. He is said to have visited Italy with the Bishop of Worcester, but this statement has been doubted; the assertion that he was ever prior of St Nicolas's Priory, Exeter, seems a mistake; on the other hand, he was certainly much at court during some part of his life. Having become an Augustinian canon, he was appointed abbot of the abbey at Cirencester in 1213. He died at Kempsey in Worcestershire, and was buried at Worcester.

Besides theology, Neckam was interested in the study of grammar and natural history, but his name is chiefly associated with nautical science. In his De naturis rerum and De utensilibus (the former of which, at any rate, had become well known at the end of the 12th century, and was probably written about 1180) Neckam has preserved to us the earliest European notices of the magnet as a guide to seamen. Outside China, indeed, these seem to be the earliest records (the Chinese encylopaedist Shen Kua gave the first clear account of suspended magnetic compasses 100 years earlier in his 1088 book Meng ch'i pi t'an (Brush Talks from Dream Brook). It was probably in Paris that Neckam heard how a ship, among its other stores, must have a needle placed above a magnet (the De utensilibus assumes a needle mounted on a pivot), which would revolve until its point looked north, and guide sailors in murky weather or on starless nights. Neckam does not seem to think of this as a startling novelty: he merely records what had apparently become the regular practice of many seamen of the Catholic world.

See Thomas Wright's edition of Neckam's De naturis rerum and De laudibus divinae sapientiae in the Rolls Series (1863), and of the De utensilibus in his Volume of Vocabularies. Neckam also wrote Corrogationes Promethei, a scriptural commentary prefaced by a treatise on grammatical criticism; a translation of Aesop into Latin elegiacs (six fables from this version, as given in a Paris manuscript, are printed in Robert's Fables inedites); commentaries, still unprinted, on portions of Aristotle, Martianus Capella and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and other works. Of all these the De naturis rerum, a sort of manual of the scientific knowledge of the 12th century, is by far the most important: the magnet passage referred to above is in book ii. chap. xcviii. (De vi attractiva), p. 183 of Wright's edition. The corresponding section in the De utensilibus is on p. 114 of the Volume of Vocabularies.

[edit] References

Roger Bacon's reference to Neckam as a grammatical writer (in multis vera et utitia scripsit: sed ... inter auctores non potest numerari) may be found in Brewer's ("Rolls" Series) edition of Bacon's Opera inedita, p. 457.