Linacre or Lynaker, Thomas (both: lĭ`nəkər), 1460?–1524, English humanist and physician. He took the degree of doctor of medicine at the Univ. of Padua, returned to England c.1492, and became tutor to Prince Arthur and later physician to Henry VIII. He was interested in the humanistic revival, wrote a Latin grammar (c.1523) for Princess Mary (then a child), and included among his pupils Desiderius Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Linacre translated many of Aristotle's and Galen's works into Latin and founded readerships in medicine at Oxford and Cambridge. He was the founder and first president of the Royal College of Physicians.

Bibliography

See biography by Sir William Osler (1908).

Linacre, Thomas

(born c. 1460, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.—died Oct. 20, 1524, London) English physician and classical scholar. Elected a fellow at Oxford in 1484, he became one of the first propagators of the humanist “New Learning” in England; his students included Desiderius Erasmus and St. Thomas More. Many prominent Londoners were his medical patients, including Henry VIII, whose approval he obtained in 1518 to found the Royal College of Physicians, which decided who should practice medicine in Greater London and which licensed physicians throughout the kingdom, ending the indiscriminate practice of medicine by barbers, clergymen, and others.