‘To the publike advancement’ John Collins and the Promotion of Mathematical Knowledge in Restoration England (2017)
Beeley, Philip (Author)
British Society for the History of Mathematics Bulletin
Volume: 32
Issue: 1
Pages: 61-74
Dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline Stedall - Of all the figures that populated England's illustrious scientific circles in the second half of the seventeenth century, John Collins is one of the most elusive. No ground-breaking discovery is associated with his name, no portrait takes him as its subject, and not so much as a gravestone survives to his memory. And yet he played a pivotal role in the development of the mathematical sciences, procuring publications from abroad, writing books and reviews, forging friendships with seminal thinkers such as Isaac Barrow, Isaac Newton, John Wallis, and James Gregory. Like no other in his time he sought to encourage the dissemination of mathematical knowledge among artisans, merchants, and seafarers and came to recognize the importance of training in mathematical disciplines. Wallis, Savilian professor of geometry in the University of Oxford, noted on one occasion that the progress of mathematical learning in England owed much to Collins's industry, while for others he was quite simply ‘the Mersenne of our nation’, a facilitator of scientific knowledge, who procured books from Amsterdam, Paris or Genoa, who selflessly communicated mathematical news to friends and scholars alike, and who devised book projects that would enable the publication of tracts by foreign or little known authors which otherwise would probably never have come into print.
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