Edward Wright
Edward Wright (* unknown; baptized October 8, 1561 in Garveston , Norfolk , † November 1615 in London ) was an English mathematician and cartographer .
Wright laid the foundation for the mathematical basis of the Mercator projection in his book "Certaine Errors in Navigation" (German for example: "Errors in (sea) navigation"), which he published in 1599 . He also published various calculation tables that made it possible for the first time to create and use maps with this projection.
Life
Wright came from a modest background in Norfolk and studied at the University of Cambridge ( Gonville and Caius College ), received an MA in 1584 and became a Fellow there in 1587, which he remained until 1596. He made friends in Cambridge with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex , the astrologer Christopher Heydon and Henry Briggs . From 1589 he was on leave from college to create maps on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I , first in connection with a capture by the Earl of Cumberland to the Azores against the Spanish in 1589, which he also published in his book Certaine Errors from 1599. In the same year he published the first English world map (with the globe manufacturer Emery Molyneux , published in Richard Hakluyt Principal Navigations, Voyages ... 1599), which was also the first map after Gerhard Mercator (originally 1569) that used his Mercator projection projected from the center of the globe onto the cylinder touching it in the equator. Mercator himself had not published the details of his method, which Wright made up for in the form of a detailed table that made it possible for subsequent cartographers to easily create such a projection map. In the table, the corresponding distance from the equator for the respective geographical latitude was on the map. In the second edition in 1610, he expanded the table to 23 pages with entries corresponding to 1 arc minute difference in width.
The second edition also included other navigation aids such as corrections for the magnetic compass and a translation of Rodrigo Zamorano's navigation manual .
Various parts of his manual were used and reprinted without his permission, for example the Dutchman Jodocus Hondius used the procedure for his Amsterdam map of the world from 1597 after borrowing a manuscript from Wright and promising not to do just that.
On the expedition to the Azores he called himself Captain Edwarde Carelesse (alias Wright), and he is possibly also identical with the captain of the Hope Edward Careless on Francis Drake's expedition to the Caribbean in 1585/86. The colonists who had gone to Virginia under Walter Raleigh , including the mathematician Thomas Harriot, were brought back . However, his participation is controversial and his participation in further sea expeditions after his participation in Cumberland's Azores expedition has not been proven with any certainty.
In 1589 he was again in Cambridge and soon afterwards in London (proven 1594), where he made observations with Heydon and in 1595 married Ursula Warren (died 1625). With her he had several children, of which only one son Samuel (1596-1616) reached an older age, he also studied at Cambridge. Around 1595 he became a Mathematical Lecturer in the City of London and also gave private lessons.
He was also a surveyor, among others on behalf of Hugh Myddleton for the approximately 60 km long canal (New River Project) from Ware (Hertfordshire) to London (Islington), which was built from 1608 to 1613 and still serves as a water supply for London. He was the first to put perspective glasses on his surveying instruments (which, however, were not identical to the telescopes that appeared in the late 17th century).
From 1608 to 1609 he taught mathematics to Henry Frederick Stuart , the Prince of Wales (son of James I ) - but he died in 1612. This was a severe blow to Wright as he was to become his librarian. He designed and built instruments for navigation (such as the Sea-Ring for the compass), astrolabes , an armillary sphere (for Prince Henry, which simulated the movement of heavenly bodies, which he also wrote a book about) and pantographs . In the early 17th century he also gave navigation lessons to seafarers in London, first in the house of the merchant Thomas Smyth, then on behalf of the East India Company. That also seems to have been his last source of income, bringing him £ 50 a year.
Wright translated 1599 De Havenvinding of Simon Stevin into English (The Haven-finding nature, or The Way to Find any Haven or Place at Sea, by the Latitude and Variation) and wrote a preface to De Magnete of William Gilbert (1600). He may also have had a share in the compass corrections sections. In 1605 he published a new edition of The Safegarde of Saylers , a popular navigation manual that Robert Norman translated from Dutch.
He translated John Napier's book on logarithms (1614) from the Latin original into English, but it did not appear until posthumously in 1616.
Fonts
- Certaine Errors in Navigation, arising either of the Ordinarie Erroneous Making or Vsing of the Sea Chart, Compasse, Crosse Staffe, and Tables of Declination of the Sunne, and Fixed Starres Detected and Corrected. London: Valentine Sims 1599, 2nd edition 1610, 3rd edition 1657
- The Description and Use of the Sphære, 1613, further edition 1627 (reprinted by Da Capo 1969)
- A Short Treatise of Dialing Shewing, the Making of All Sorts of Sun-dials ..., 1614
There are also various translations and editorships mentioned above.
literature
- PJ Wallis, Dictionary of Scientific Biography
- Eva GR Taylor : The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England, Cambridge University Press 1954
Individual evidence
- ↑ Shakespeare refers to the card in Twelfth Night
- ↑ This Alec Skempton , A biographical dictionary of civil engineers in Great Britain and Ireland , Volume 1, Thomas Telford, London 2002, entry Edward Wright
- ^ NAF Smith Edward Wright and his perspective glass: a surveying puzzle of the early seventeenth century , Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 70, 1999, 100-122
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wright, Edward |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English mathematician and cartographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | baptized October 8, 1561 |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 1615 |
| Place of death | London |