John Pell
|birth_place =
Southwick,
Sussex,
England1685 | 12 | 03|01}}|death_place = Westminster, London, England|residence = England|citizenship = |nationality = English|ethnicity = |field = Mathematician and linguist|work_institutions = University of Amsterdam|alma_mater = Trinity College, Cambridge|doctoral_advisor = | William Brereton (mathematician)>William Brereton |known_for = Pell's equation | Pell number|author_abbrev_bot = |author_abbrev_zoo =
Henry Briggs (mathematician)>Henry Briggs|influenced = |prizes = |religion = Anglican|footnotes = He was the brother of Thomas Pell|signature =}} | John Pell (
March 1,
1611 –
December 12,
1685), was an
English mathematician.He was born at Southwick in
Sussex, where his father was minister. He was educated at
Steyning Grammar School, and entered
Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen. During his university career he became an accomplished linguist, and even before he took his M.A. degree (in 1630) corresponded with
Henry Briggs and other mathematicians. His great reputation and the influence of Sir
William Boswell, the English resident, with the states-general procured his election in 1643 to the chair of mathematics in
Amsterdam, whence he removed in
1646, on the invitation of
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, to
Breda, where he remained till 1652.From
1654 to
1658 Pell acted as
Oliver Cromwell's political agent to the
Protestant cantons of
Switzerland. On his return to England he took orders and was appointed by King
Charles II of England to the
rectory of
Fobbing in
Essex. In
1673 he was presented by Bishop
Gilbert Sheldon to the rectory of Laindon in the same county. Upon the death of John Pell's brother,
Thomas Pell, in 1670, the mathematician's son,
Sir John Pell inherited lands in New York, where he lived as the first
Lord of the Manor of Pelham. His descendants have continued to be prominent in the American polity, including Ambassador and U.S. Representative
Herbert Pell and U.S. Senator
Claiborne Pell. His devotion to mathematical science seems to have interfered with his advancement in the Church and with his private life. For a time he was confined as a
debtor in the
King's Bench Prison. He lived, on the invitation of Dr Whistler, for a short time in 1682 at the
College of Physicians, but died at the house of Mr Cothorne, reader of the church of
St Giles-in-the Fields. Many of Pell's manuscripts fell into the hands of
Richard Busby, master of
Westminster School, and afterwards came into the possession of the
Royal Society; they are still preserved in something like forty folio volumes, which contain, not only Pell's own memoirs, but much of his correspondence with the mathematicians of his time.The
Diophantine equation was a favorite subject with Pell; he lectured on it at Amsterdam; and he is now best remembered for the indeterminate equation
ax2+1=y2
, which is known as the
Pell equation or
Pell's equation. This problem was proposed by
Pierre de Fermat first to
Bernhard Frenicle de Bessy, and in 1657 to all mathematicians. Pell's connection with the problem consists of the publication of the solutions of
John Wallis and Lord Brounker in his edition of Breaker's
Translation of Rizonius's Algebra (1668), and his contributions to a book written by
Johann Heinrich Rahn(1).His chief works are:
- Astronomical History of Observations of Heavenly Motions and Appearances (1634)
- Ecliptica prognostica (1634)
- Controversy with Longomontanus concerning the Quadrature of the Circle (1646?)
- An Idea of the Mathematics, I2iflO (1650)
- A Table of Ten Thousand Square Numbers (fol.; 1672).
References
- {{1911}}
- The most recent study of Pell is by Noel Malcolm and Jacqueline Stedall, John Pell (1611-1685) and His Correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish: The Mental World of an Early Modern Mathematician (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). ISBN 0-19-856484-8
-
[{{citation | last1 = O'Connor | first1 = J. J. | last2 = Robertson | first2 = E. F. | title=John Pell | url=http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Pell.html| date=2005}}]
See also
External links
- {{MacTutor Biography|id=Pell}}
- weblink
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