Biography:William Jones (mathematician)
William Jones | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of William Jones by William Hogarth, 1740 National Portrait Gallery | |
| Born | 1675 Llanfihangel Tre'r Beirdd, Isle of Anglesey |
| Died | 3 July 1749 (aged 73-74) London, England |
William Jones, FRS (1675 – 1 July 1749[1]) was a Welsh mathematician, most noted for his use of the symbol π (the Greek letter Pi) to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. He was a close friend of Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Edmund Halley. In November 1711 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was later its vice-president.[2]
Biography
William Jones was born the son of Siôn Siôr (John George Jones) and Elizabeth Rowland in the parish of Llanfihangel Tre'r Beirdd, about 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Benllech on the Isle of Anglesey. He attended a charity school at Llanfechell, also on the Isle of Anglesey, where his mathematical talents were spotted by the local landowner Lord Bulkeley, who arranged for him to work in a merchant's counting-house in London.[3] His main patrons were the Bulkeley family of north Wales, and later the Earl of Macclesfield.[4]
Jones initially served at sea, teaching mathematics on board Navy ships between 1695 and 1702, where he became very interested in navigation and published A New Compendium of the Whole Art of Navigation in 1702,[3] dedicated to a benefactor John Harris.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag[5][6][7][8] His 1711 work Analysis per quantitatum series, fluxiones ac differentias introduced the dot notation for differentiation in calculus.[9]
He was noticed and befriended by two of Britain's foremost mathematicians – Edmund Halley and Sir Isaac Newton – and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1711. He later became the editor and publisher of many of Newton's manuscripts and built up an extraordinary library that was one of the greatest collections of books on science and mathematics ever known, and only recently fully dispersed.[10]
He married twice, firstly the widow of his counting-house employer, whose property he inherited on her death, and secondly, in 1731, Mary, the 22-year-old daughter of cabinet-maker George Nix, with whom he had two surviving children. His son, also named William Jones and born in 1746, was a renowned philologist who established links between Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, leading to the concept of the Indo-European language group.[11]
References
- ↑ Roberts, Gareth Ffowc (2020). Cyfri'n Cewri. University Press Wales. p. 57. ISBN 978-1786835949.
- ↑ "Library and Archive catalogue". Royal Society. http://www2.royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=21&dsqSearch=%28Surname%3D%27jones%27%29.[yes|permanent dead link|dead link}}]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Jones biography". University of St. Andrews. http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Jones.html.
- ↑ Cyfri'n Cewri by Gareth Ffowc Roberts; University of Wales Press (2020); p. 14.
- ↑ Rothman, Patricia (7 July 2009). "William Jones and his Circle: The Man who invented Pi". https://www.historytoday.com/patricia-rothman/william-jones-and-his-circle-man-who-invented-pi.
- ↑ Roberts, Gareth Ffowc (14 March 2015). "Pi Day 2015: meet the man who invented π" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/mar/14/pi-day-2015-william-jones-the-welshman-who-invented-pi.
- ↑ Bogart, Steven. "What is pi, and how did it originate?" (in en). Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-pi-and-how-did-it/.
- ↑ Archibald, R. C. (1921). "Historical Notes on the Relation [math]\displaystyle{ e^{-(\pi/2)} = i^i }[/math]". The American Mathematical Monthly 28 (3): 121. doi:10.2307/2972388. "It was probably suggested to Jones by Oughtred who employed the symbol in a different sense.".
- ↑ Garland Hampton Cannon (1990). The life and mind Oriental Jones. https://books.google.com/books?id=V7vgzG1BtYgC. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
- ↑ "How a farm boy from Wales gave the world pi". The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-a-farm-boy-from-wales-gave-the-world-pi-55917.
- ↑ Roberts, Gareth Ffowc (14 March 2015). "Pi Day 2015: meet the man who invented π". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/mar/14/pi-day-2015-william-jones-the-welshman-who-invented-pi.
External links
- William Jones and other important Welsh mathematicians
- William Jones and his Circle: The Man who invented Pi
- Pi Day 2015: meet the man who invented π
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