Mathematician:John Wallis

English mathematician who made considerable contributions towards the invention of the calculus.

Credited with introducing the symbol $\infty$ for infinity.

One of the first English mathematicians to use the techniques of analytic geometry as defined by Descartes. Rediscovered a neat proof of Pythagoras' Theorem originally published by Bhāskara II in the 12th century.

Nationality
English

History

 * Born: November 23, 1616, Ashford, Kent, England
 * Died: October 28, 1703, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England

Theorems and Definitions

 * Wallis's Product

Books and Papers

 * 1655: Tract on Conic Sections
 * 1656: Arithmetica infinitorum (in which Wallis's Product appears)
 * 1659: De Cycloide et de Corporibus inde Genitis (which incorporated William Neile's work on the rectification of the semicubical parabola)
 * 1685: Treatise on Algebra

Treatise of Angular Sections (unpublished for forty years after it was written)

Restored some ancient Greek texts, for example:


 * Ptolemy's Harmonics
 * Aristarchus's On the magnitudes and distances of the sun and moon
 * Archimedes' Sand-reckoner

Dispute with Hobbes
From 1655 onwards he was involved in an intellectual dispute with Thomas Hobbes, whence various publications with titles like:


 * Due Correction for Mr Hobbes, or School Discipline for not saying his Lessons Aright

Non-mathematical

 * 1653: Grammatica linguae Anglicanae
 * 1687: Institutio logicae