Jim Bennett (Obituary, 19 December) made a deep and enduring contribution to the study of Sir Christopher Wren. Wren was an astronomer of international repute before he became the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral, and it was Bennett who first demonstrated the essential unity of these things.
In his PhD thesis, and then in his subsequent book The Mathematical Science of Christopher Wren (1982), he showed how the beauty and consistency that Wren found in the natural world was then translated into the design and construction of the churches that he rebuilt after the Great Fire of London. Bennett’s writings inspired a new generation of Wren scholars (including me), to whom he was unfailingly kind and generous.
Prof Anthony Geraghty
University of York
