Charles Scarborough

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For the American television personality and politician, see Joe Scarborough

Sir Charles Scarborough

Sir Charles Scarborough, MP, FRS, FRCP (1615-1694), was an English physician and mathematician.

Scarborough was born in 1615, and educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (BA, 1637, MA, 1640) and Merton College, Oxford (MD, 1646). While at Oxford he was a student of William Harvey, and the two would become close friends. Scarborough was also tutor to Christopher Wren, who was for a time his assistant.

Following the Restoration in 1660, Scarborough was appointed physician to Charles II, who knighted him in 1669; Scarborough attended the king on his deathbed, and was later physician to James II and William and Mary. During the reign of James II, Scarborough served (from 1685-1687) as Member of Parliament for Camelford in Cornwall.

Scarborough was an original fellow of the Royal Society and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, author of a treatise on anatomy, Syllabus Musculorum, which was used for many years as a textbook, and a translator and commentator of the first six books of Euclid's Elements (published in 1705). He also was the subject of a poem by Abraham Cowley, An Ode to Dr Scarborough.

Scarborough died in London in 1694.