Mark Ridley (physician) facts for kids
Dr Mark Ridley was an English doctor and someone who made dictionaries. He was born in Stretham, England, around 1560. He later became a doctor for English traders in Russia. He even became the personal doctor for the Tsar of Russia, who was the ruler of the country.
Mark Ridley's Russian Dictionaries
While living in Russia between 1594 and 1599, Mark Ridley created two special dictionaries. One was a Russian-English dictionary with over 7,000 words. It was called A dictionarie of the vulgar Russe tongue. The other was an English-Russian dictionary with over 8,000 words.
These dictionaries are very important because they recorded the everyday spoken Russian language of that time. The written Russian language was quite different, often using older words from church texts. Ridley's dictionaries showed how people actually talked.
Today, these old handwritten dictionaries are kept safe at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in England. They help us understand how the Russian language was used hundreds of years ago. Ridley's dictionary even included many words and phrases that had never been written down before.
Studying Magnets
Even though his Russian dictionaries were very special, Mark Ridley is also known for his work on magnetism. He was a big supporter of another famous scientist named Dr William Gilbert. Gilbert wrote an important book about magnets called De Magnete in 1600.
Ridley even lived with Dr. Gilbert for a while. In 1613, Ridley published his own book called Magneticall Bodies and Motions. This was the first book in English to explain and promote Gilbert's ideas about magnets. Ridley also supported Gilbert's ideas about how the Earth moves, which was a new and sometimes controversial idea at the time.
