William George Horner

William George Horner (* 1786 in Bristol , † September 22, 1837 in Bath ) was an English mathematician .

He attended the Kingswood School Bristol. At the age of fourteen he became an assistant teacher and four years later even the director of his school. He left Bristol in 1809 and started his own school in Bath.

Horner's most significant contribution to mathematics was the Horner scheme for solving algebraic equations. It was submitted to the Royal Society on July 1, 1819 and published that same year in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society . However, Horner was not the first to discover this method, as it was known to Zhu Shijie (and also to Paolo Ruffini ) five centuries earlier . To solve equations, Zhu used a conversion method that he called fan fa and that Horner rediscovered as the Horner scheme.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Horner scheme occupied an important place in some algebra books. This was mainly due to Augustus De Morgan , who had dealt with it extensively under that name in a number of his articles.

Zoetrope from 1887

Horner was also active in the field of optics: in 1834 he developed the Daedalum or Daedatelum , which is still known today as the zoetrope .

Web links

John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : William George Horner. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .

Individual evidence

^ William George Horner: A new method of solving numerical equations of all orders, by continuous approximation. In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, (1819), pp. 308-335. See also the review in: The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal, Enlarged 91 (1820), Art. V (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for the Year 1819), Part II (Mathematics), p. 373– 376.

personal data
SURNAME	Horner, William George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	English mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	1786
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bristol , England
DATE OF DEATH	September 22, 1837
Place of death	Bath , England

[1] William George Horner: A new method of solving numerical equations of all orders, by continuous approximation. In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, (1819), pp. 308-335. See also the review in: The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal, Enlarged 91 (1820), Art. V (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for the Year 1819), Part II (Mathematics), p. 373– 376.