Erasmus_Smith's_Chair_of_Modern_History
Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History is a chair in history at Trinity College Dublin. It was founded in 1762 and funded by the Erasmus Smith Trust,[1] which was established by Erasmus Smith, who lived 1611–1691.[2] It had been preceded by a Professorship of Oratory and History in 1724, and in 1762 the original professorship continued as a Professorship of Oratory alone.[3]
One of its incumbents was the celebrated J. B. Bury (1861-1927), author of History of the Roman Empire (1893), The Life of St. Patrick and his place in History (1905) and A History of Freedom of Thought (1914).[4][5] The current occupant of the Erasmus Smith’s chair is Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, a historian of the seventeenth-century Irish nobility.[6]