John Pell

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John Pell

John Pell (born March 1, 1611 in Southwick , Sussex , † December 12, 1685 in Westminster , London ) was an English mathematician .

Life

Pell was born in Southwick, Sussex , where his father of the same name, John Pell, was pastor and principal; his mother was Mary Holland of Halden from Kent. Pell was orphaned at an early age - his father died in 1616, his mother in 1617. He went to school in Steyning , Sussex and entered Trinity College, Cambridge at the age of 13 in 1624. He studied Latin and Greek, graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1628, and just before receiving his MA in 1630, he began correspondence with Henry Briggs (on logarithms ) and other mathematicians. After graduation he worked as a teacher in Horsham and at the Chichester Academy in Sussex and then for five years in London. Due to his reputation and with the help of the English ambassador to the Netherlands Sir William Boswell , he became professor of mathematics at the Athenaeum Illustre Amsterdam in Amsterdam in 1643 . In 1646 he became professor at the University of Breda at the invitation of Friedrich Heinrich, Prince of Orange , where he remained until 1652.

From 1654 to 1658 Pell acted as Oliver Cromwell's political agent for the Protestant cantons of Switzerland , which he was to split off from the Catholic cantons on Cromwell's order and to transfer to a Protestant league. In Zurich he also taught mathematics to Johann Heinrich Rahn , whose algebra textbook he later had translated into English (with his own additions). His political negotiations dragged on and on his return to England Cromwell, to whom he was to report, was already dying. He now turned to a church career, became a deacon (Deacon) and in 1661 he received the ordination of priests. Pell became vicar in Fobbing in Essex and in 1663 additionally from Laindon and Basildon in Essex, which he remained for the last twenty years of his life. But that did not prevent him from visiting London frequently. John Pell was one of the "Original Fellows" of the Royal Society . He was officially admitted on May 20, 1663, but was likely to have worked for the company earlier. In 1675 he became its vice-president.

In London he often lived with John Collins . During the plague epidemic in 1665 he lived with William Brereton (Lord Brereton) in Cheshire . Brereton had been his student in Amsterdam and became a close friend of Pell.

Pell married Ithumaria, daughter of Henry Ragnolles (or "Reginalds") from London in 1632, and had four sons and four daughters with her. After her death in 1661, he married a second time. He died on December 12, 1685 in Mr. Cothorne's quarters on Dyot Street in London and was buried in the "rector's vault" of St Giles-in-the-Fields in London.

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Pell dealt with algebra and number theory ( Diophantine equations ). In 1668 he published a table of factors ranging from numbers to 100,000. The special Diophantine equation (where a is an integer which is not a square) than Pellgleichung or Pell's equation known. It had already been studied by the medieval mathematicians Brahmagupta and Bhaskara II in India. The solution to this equation was presented as a problem by Pierre de Fermat in a letter to Bernard Frénicle de Bessy and published as a problem for general knowledge in 1657. The theory of the equation was mainly developed by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in the 18th century . The naming after Pell was done by Leonhard Euler , who had found Brouncker's solutions in the Latin edition of the Algebra of Wallis, he then incorrectly named the equation after Pell.

Pell was keen to promote the state of mathematics in England, and this and in his correspondence are his main merits. He published relatively little, including Idea of ​​Mathematics (1638) and a rejection of the squaring of the circle by the Danish astronomer Longomontanus from 1644 (published 1644, in Latin translation 1647). The controversy, which originated in Pell's interest in calculating pi, continued with other mathematicians after Longomontanus' death in 1647. He also translated the trigonometric tables by Johan Philip Lansberg (1632) and studied astronomy.

Works

  • The Description and Use of the Quadrant , written for the Use of a Friend in two books. 1628
  • Modus supputandi Ephemerides astronomicas (quantum ad motum Solis attinet) paradigmate ad ann. 1630 accommodato. 1630
  • A Key to Unlock the Meaning of Joannis Trithemius, in his discourse of steganography . 1630
  • Astronomical History of Observations of Heavenly Motions and Appearances . (1634)
  • Ecliptica prognostica . (1634)
  • Idea Matheseωs [= Matheseōs] . 1638
    • (reprinted in :) Robert Hooke (ed.): Philosophical Collections , Vol. VII, No. 5. Richard Chiswel, London 1682, pp. 127–134, with some explanatory letters, pp. 135–145 ( Google Books )
    • (English translation) An Idea of ​​Mathematicks . In: John Dury , Samuel Hartlib , John Pell, Johann Schwartzkopf : The reformed librarie-keeper . William Du-Gard, Robert Littlebury, London 1650, pp. 33-46
  • Ε᾿λέγξεως [Elenxeōs] contra Christianum S. Longomontanum de mensura circuli (1644). Copenhagen ( Haunia ) 1644 ( digitized from the Zurich Central Library)
    • (reprinted in :) Controversia De vera Circuli mensurâ, anno MDCXLIV exorta , Inter Christianum Severini, Longomontanum Cimbrum, Superiorem Mathematum ... et Ioannem Pellium, Coritano-Regnum, Anglum, Matheseos, vol. I. Joannes Blaeu, Amsterdam 1647, p. 37-62 ( Google Books )
  • (Co-author) Johann Heinrich Rahn , John Pell: An introduction to algebra , translated out of the High-Dutch into English by Thomas Brancker …; much altered and augmented by D.P. (= Dr. John Pell); Also, a table of odd numbers less than one hundred thousand, shewing those that are incomposit and resolving the rest into their factors or coefficients, & c., supputated by the same Tho. Brancker. Moses Pitt, London 1668
  • Tabula numerorum quadratorum decies millium, unà cum ipsorum lateribus from unitate incipientibus & ordine naturali usque ad 10000 progredientibus . Thomas Ratcliffe & Nath. Thompson, London 1672

literature

  • Noel Malcolm, Jacqueline Stedall : John Pell (1611–1685) and His Correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish: The Mental World of an Early Modern Mathematician . Oxford 2005. ISBN 0-19-856484-8
  • PJ Wallis: Pell, John . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 10 : SG Navashin - W. Piso . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1974, p. 495–496 ( supplemented in the new edition by Christoph J. Scriba ).
  • PJ Wallis: An early mathematical manifesto - John Pell's "Idea of ​​Mathematics" , Durham Research Review, Volume 18, 1967, pp. 139-148.
  • N. Malcolm: The publications of John Pell FRS (1611-1685): some new light and some old confusions , Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Volume 54, 2000, pp. 275-292.
  • Christoph J. Scriba: John Pell's English Edition of JH Rahn's Teutsche Algebra , in: RS Cohen, JJ Stachel, MW Wartofsky (Ed.), For Dirk Struik: scientific, historical, and political essays in honor of Dirk J. Struik , Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1974, pp. 261-274.
  • JA van Maanen: The refutation of Longomontanus quadrature by John Pell , Ann. of Sci., Vol. 43, 1986, pp. 315-352.

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Revised translation by: Johann Heinrich Rahn: Teutsche Algebra, Or Algebraische Rechenkunst together with their use . Bodmer, Zurich 1659 ( digitized version of the Bavarian State Library in Munich).
  2. ↑ Thomas Branker (Brancker) (1633–1676), English mathematician.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Pell, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1611
PLACE OF BIRTH Southwick , Sussex
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1685
Place of death Westminster , London