Erasmus Smith's Professor 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]