Challis Professorship


The Challis Professorship are professorships at the University of Sydney named in honour of John Henry Challis, an Anglo-Australian merchant, landowner and philanthropist, whose bequests to the University of Sydney allowed for their establishment.
In 1880 John Henry Challis bequeathed residuary real and personal estate to the University, "to be applied for the benefit of that Institution in such manner as the governing body thereof shall direct". From the income of the Fund a sum of £7,500 was applied for the payment of half the cost of the erection of a new Chemical Laboratory, and a further sum of £1,900 devoted to the erection of a marble statue of Mr Challis, which has been placed in the Great Hall, opposite to that of Mr W. C. Wentworth. The Challis appointments were then created.

Professorships

There are currently Challis Professorships in nine different subjects:

English

This chair appears to have been the fourth of its kind in the English-speaking world. Its predecessors were the Regius Chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh; the Chair of Jurisprudence and the Law of Nations at UCL; and the Chair of Jurisprudence and International Law at Trinity College, Dublin. It was split after Stone's retirement into two separate chairs.