John Pell

To Steyning's grammar school came John Pell. He married the daughter of the founder, but should be remembered in every school in England for his invention of the sign of division.

 

Every time we make the sign for division we are unconsciously quoting John Pell, a mathematical genius who gave the world little more than this symbol. He was born at Southwick in 1611, and admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, at 13. Study was a passion with him; he graduated B.A. at 17, became master of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, French, Spanish, and Dutch, and was famous as a mathematician.

He was appointed by Cromwell Envoy to the Protestant Swiss Cantons, which it was desired to detach from France, and for six years be laboured without much success, returning to find Cromwell at the point of death. At the Restoration he was presented to the rectory of Fobbing, in Essex.

Such was the benevolent simplicity of his character, however, that he was shamelessly imposed on by his tenants and relatives. He had a wife and eight children, but for all his talent and learning he had not enough practical wisdom to keep himself in comfort.

 

A bishopric was in sight for him, but bishoprics are not for bankrupt incumbents. We are told that he had not money enough to furnish his needs in paper, pens, and ink. Charity must have supplied his wants in this respect, for wherever he went he left sheaves of manuscript.

But he published practically nothing. One of the best brains of the age was constantly producing, but keeping all to himself. Scientific friends besought him to publish, but the poor man pleaded lack of time when lack of means was probably more than half the cause. The one thing by which he is remembered is his sign for division.

After his death in London in 1685, following two melancholy imprisonments for debt, his papers were collected, too late for his comfort if not for his reputation.

 

They fill over fifty volumes in the British Museum, and various manuscripts of some interest are preserved in other collections. He sleeps in London in the rector's vault of the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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