John Winthrop Jr.Died 5 Apr 1676 (born c. 1605).English colonial governor of Connecticut (later a state of the U.S.) for the periods 1657-58 and 1659-76. Because of his scientific interests in chemistry and medicine, he was made a member of the Royal Society (1663) during a stay back in England - and became the first member resident in America. He established iron, lead and salt works, but they did not prosper. In astronomy, he predicted a fifth satellite of Jupiter, although instruments the time were not powerful enough to confirm his theory. In a letter to the Royal Society, he wrote what he had heard in midsummer 1670 about a hill near Wells, Maine, that had leapt from its original location and fallen upside down into the Kennebunk River, blocking its waters.«* |
