John Taylor (mathematician)

John Taylor (born 1664) was an English mathematician and traveller, author of a manuscript account of Jamaica.[1]

Life

John Taylor was the posthumous son of a minor gentleman from the Isle of Wight. In 1685 Taylor fought for James II against the Monmouth Rebellion. Returning to London to study mathematics and chemistry, he published the textbook Thesaurarium mathematicae in 1686, and married. Shortly after, with his wife pregnant, Taylor left for the Caribbean after an argument with his father-in-law, and arrived in Jamaica at Christmas 1686. Though he stayed for under six months, his Multum in Parvo collected together natural history and social description of the island.[2]

Works

Thesaurarium mathematicae, or, The treasury of mathematicks containing variety of usefull practices in arithmetick, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, geography, navigation and surveying ... to which is annexed a table of 10000 logarithms, log-sines, and log-tangents, 1686
Multum in Parvo. Or Taylor's Historie of his Life, and Travells in America and other Parts, MS., 1687. MS. 105, National Library of Jamaica. Published as David Buisseret, ed., Jamaica in 1687: The Taylor Manuscript at the National Library of Jamaica, University of West Indies Press, 2008.

References

Buisseret, David (1996). "The Taylor Manuscript and Seventeenth-Century Jamaica". In Roderick A. McDonald (ed.). West Indies Accounts: Essays on the History of the British Caribbean and the Atlantic Economy in Honour of Richard Sheridan. Press, University of the West Indies. pp. 48–63. ISBN 978-976-640-022-4.
Susan Dwyer Amussen (2009). Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700. Univ of North Carolina Press. p. 45–6. ISBN 978-0-8078-8883-4.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[Sheridan1996-1] Buisseret, David (1996). "The Taylor Manuscript and Seventeenth-Century Jamaica". In Roderick A. McDonald (ed.). West Indies Accounts: Essays on the History of the British Caribbean and the Atlantic Economy in Honour of Richard Sheridan. Press, University of the West Indies. pp. 48–63. ISBN 978-976-640-022-4.

[Amussen2009-2] Susan Dwyer Amussen (2009). Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700. Univ of North Carolina Press. p. 45–6. ISBN 978-0-8078-8883-4.