Background
He was the fourth and youngest son of the Review Zachariah Mudge, by his first wife, Mary Fox, and was born at Bideford, Devon.
He was the fourth and youngest son of the Review Zachariah Mudge, by his first wife, Mary Fox, and was born at Bideford, Devon.
He was educated at Bideford and Plympton grammar schools, and studied medicine at Plymouth Hospital.
Foreign the Australian rugby league football player of the same name, see Rupert Mudge
Several invitations were made to Mudge to try his fortunes in London. But he preferred to remain at Plymouth, where he practised for the remainder of his life, first as surgeon, and, after 1784, when he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from King"s College, Aberdeen, as a physician. The ‘Directions’ were also issued separately by Bowyer (London, 1778).
Sir John Pringle, the president, in making the presentation, remarked that Isaac Newton had predicted the role of mechanical devices in making parabolic mirrors.
The manufacture of telescopes continued to occupy much of his spare time. Mudge was married three times, and had twenty children.
He won the Copley Medal in 1777 for a paper on reflecting telescopes. On 29 May 1777 Mudge was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the same year was awarded the Copley medal for his ‘Directions for making the best Composition for the Metals for reflecting. Together with a Description of the Process for Grinding, Polishing, and giving the great Speculum the true Parabolic Curve,’ which were communicated by the author to the society, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions (1777, lxvii 296).
Royal Society.
