Pell

(John), an English mathematician of Southwyke, Su ex, was born in 1610, educated at Stenning school, and at 13 entered at Trinity college, Cambridge, where he applied himself to mathematics with unusual a iduity. After taking his master’s degree, he was incorporated at Oxford in 1631, and by his various publications he acquired so much reputation, that he was invited in 1639 to fill up a profe or’s chair at Amsterdam, to which he succeeded 1643. In 1646 he settled at Breda as profe or of philosophy and mathematics, at the request of the prince of Orange, and in 1652 returned to his native country. In 1654 he was sent by Cromwell as English resident to Switzerland, and returned a little before the protector’s death. In 1661.he was ordained by the bishop of Lincoln, and obtained from the crown the rectory of Fobbing. in E ex, to which the bishop of London afterwards added the rectory of Laving don in that county. Though respectable as a scholar, and a man of science, Dr. Pell was unfortunately very inattentive to the state of his domestic affairs, and consequently he became poor in his old age, and was even confined in the king’s bench as a debtor. He died 1685, and was interred by the charity of Busby, master — of Westminster school, and Sharp, rector of. St. Giles’. Pell was the author of various works, and among them the following: 1, An Exercitation concerning Easter; 1644, in 4to. 2. A Table of 10,000 square numbers, 8c. 1672, folio. 8. An Inaugural Oration at his entering upon the Profe orship at Breda. 4, He made great alterations and additions. to Rhonius’s Algebra, printed at London 1668, 4to, under the title of, An Introduction to Algebra; translated out of the High Dutch into English, by Thomas Branker, much ale tered and augmented by D. P. (Dr. Pell). Also a Table of Odd Numbers, le than 100,000, shewing those that are incomposite, . supputated by the same Thomas Branker. 5. His Controversy with Longomontanus concerning the Quadrature of the Circle; Am-= sterdam, 1646, 4to. He likewise wrote a Demonstration of the 2d and 10th books of Euclid; which piece was in MS. in the library of lord Brereton in Che= shire: as also Arch i me des’s Arenarius, and the greatest part of Diophantus’s six books of Arithmetic; of which author he was’ prepar- ing, August, 1644, a new edition, in which he intended to have corrected the translation, and made new illustrations. He designed likewise to publish an edition of A poll on i us, but laid it aside, in May, 1645, at the desire of Golius, who was engaged in an edition of that author from an Arabic manuscript given him at Alep- po eighteen years before. Letters of Dr. Pell to sir Charles Cavendish, in the Royal Society. Some of his manuscripts he left at Brereton in Cheshire, where he resided some years, being the seat of William lord Brereton, who “had been his pupil at Breda. A great many others came into the hands of Dr. Busby; which Mr. Hook was desired to use his en- -deavours to obtain for the Society.’ But they continued buried under dust, and mixed with the papers and pamphlets of Dr. Busby, in four large boxes, till 1755; when Dr. Birch, - secretary to the Royal Society, procured them for that body, from the trustees of Dr. Busby. The collection contains not only Pell’s ma- - them a tical papers, letters to him, and copies of ‘those from him, . but also several manu- *scripts of Walter Warner, the mathematician.and philosopher, who lived in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. Dr. Pell invented the method of ranging the several steps of an algebraical calculus, in a proper order, in so many distinct lines, with the number affixed to each step, and a short description of the operation or proce in the line. He also invented the character ~~ for division, @ for involution, and ly for evolution. 173