John Wallis
1616 – 1703 · aged 87
English mathematician (*1616 – †1703)
- Born
- 1616 · Ashford
- Died
- 1703 · Oxford
Life timeline
Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.
- 1616BornBorn in Ashford
- 1649 – 1703RoleSavilian Professor of Geometry
- 1703DiedDied in Oxford
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Meanwhile in the world
Major world events during their lifetime (1616 – 1703).
- 1642 – 1651English Civil War
Biography
John Wallis (Latin: Wallisius; 3 December [O.S. 23 November] 1616 – 8 November [O.S. 28 October] 1703) was an English clergyman and mathematician, who is given partial credit for the development of infinitesimal calculus.
Between 1643 and 1689 Wallis served as chief cryptographer for Parliament and, later, the royal court. He extended Cavalieri's method of indivisibles through the use of interpolation. Applying Kepler's principle of continuity, he developed techniques for the evaluation of integrals. He is credited with introducing the symbol ∞ to represent the concept of infinity. He similarly used 1/∞ for an infinitesimal. He was a contemporary of Isaac Newton and one of the greatest intellectuals of the early modern mathematics.
Text from the Wikipedia article John Wallis, CC BY-SA 4.0
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