Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ball, Peter

765627Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 03 — Ball, Peter1885Gordon Goodwin

BALL or BALLE, PETER, M.D. (d. 1675), physician, was brother of William Ball [q. v.], F.R.S. On 13 Jan. 1658-9, being then twenty years of age, he was entered as a medical student at Leyden, but proceeded to Padua, where he took the degree of doctor of philosophy and physic with the highest distinction 30 Dec. 1660. To celebrate the occasion verses in Latin, Italian, and English were published at Padua, in which our physician, by a somewhat violent twist of his latinised names, Petrus Bule, is made to figure as 'alter Phœbus.' Ball was admitted an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Dec. 1664. He was one of the original fellows of the Royal Society, one of the council in 1666, and in the following year was placed on the committee for causing a catalogue to be made of the noble library and manuscripts of Arundel House, which had been presented to the society by Henry Howard, Esq., afterwards Duke of Norfolk. While at Mamhead in October 1665, Ball, in conjunction with his elder brother, William, made the observation of Saturn mentioned under William Ball. Dying in July 1675, he was buried on the 20th of that month in the round of the Temple Church.

[Prince's Worthies of Devon, pp. 111-13; Munk's Roll of Royal College of Physicians (1878), i. 335; Apollinare Sacrum, &c. 4to, Patavii, mdclx.; Birch's Hist. Roy. Soc. vol. i.-iii. passim; Athenæum, 21 Aug. and 9 Oct. 1880; Temple Register.]

G. G.