Croonian Lecture

The Croonian Lectures are prestigious lectureships given at the invitation of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians.

Among the papers of William Croone at his death in 1684, was a plan to endow one lectureship at both the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians. His wife provided the bequest in 1701 specifying that it was "for the support of a lecture and illustrative experiment for the advancement of natural knowledge on local motion, or (conditionally) of such other subjects as, in the opinion of the President for the time being, should be most useful in promoting the objects for which the Royal Society was instituted". One lecture was to be delivered by a Fellow to the Royal College of Physicians and the other, on the nature and laws of muscular motion to be delivered before the Royal Society. The Royal Society lecture series began in 1738 and that of the Royal College of Physicians in 1749.

Croone became an original Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1663. He also became one of the original Fellows of the College of Physicians on 29 July 1675. He was appointed lecturer on anatomy at Surgeons' hall in 1670 and pursued research in several important subjects of his day, including respiration, muscular motion, and generation.