‘Too much for mee to speake of’: the many facets of John Wallis's life and legacy

Abstract

Many early modern men and women left behind documents and artefacts that suggested how they wanted to be remembered. By the time John Wallis, the Oxford-based mathematician and theologian, had died in 1703, he had left several such items for future generations. For instance, in 1697, he wrote an autobiographical letter to his friend Thomas Smith, fellow of Magdalen College. The letter begins with an account of how Wallis, born in Ashford, Kent, in 1616 to a minister and his wife, spent his childhood at schools in Kent and Essex before he matriculated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1632. After graduating BA (1637) and MA (1640) from Emmanuel, Wallis was ordained as a minister and might have stayed on the clerical career path if not for certain unexpected developments, described in his letter, that led him toward a different career. In particular, Wallis explained how he discovered his aptitude for mathematics when, while home from Cambridge for Christmas in 1631, he learned basic arithmetic from his brother, who was training for a career as a draper. Wallis's natural mathematical ability would prove invaluable when, in 1649, he was installed as Savilian Professor of Geometry despite having little mathematical training. Although the reasons for his appointment were at least partly political,1 the results were spectacular: Wallis published a flurry of ground-breaking mathematical works during the 1650s, and he went on to enjoy a long and productive mathematical career for the next half-century. The rest of Wallis's autobiographical letter focuses on the significant events in which he participated throughout his life, from serving as a scribe in the Westminster Assembly of Divines to the founding of the Royal Society of London, of which he was an active member.2 These were the aspects of his career that Wallis sought to preserve …