Collins, John

1. Dates

Born: Wood Eaton, near Oxford, 5 March 1625

Died: London, 10 Nov. 1683

Dateinfo: Dates Certain

Lifespan: 58

2. Father

Occupation: Cleric

He was a non-conformist minister who died no later than Collins' thirteenth birthday.

Stated to have been poor; he was unable to educate his son.

3. Nationality

Birth: England

Career: England

Death: England

4. Education

Schooling: No University

No university education. Studied mathematics, mostly while serving at sea, 1641-1649.

5. Religion

Affiliation: Anglican

Since nothing whatever is said, I take this as a guess. I saw nothing to indicate that he maintained his father's affiliation.

6. Scientific Disciplines

Primary: Mathematics

Collins was important for his role as a mathematical intelligencer. He did publish some derivative mathematical works of his own, such as Doctrine of Decimal Arithmetick, 1664 (enlarged edition, 1685, posthumous).

7. Means of Support

Primary: Government

Secondary: Sailing, Schoolmastering

After the death of his parents, Collins was apprenticed in 1638 to a bookseller in Oxford.

Kitchen clerk at Court, 1641-2. It was here that he began to learn mathematics.

Seaman in the Venetian service, 1642-9. And it was during this period that he continued his education in mathematics.

Mathematics teacher in London, 1649-60.

Accountant of the Excise Office, c.1660-70.

Secretary to the Council of Plantations, 1670-2.

Manager of Farthing Office 1672- ? (not too long after 1672).

Accountant in Chancery.

Accountant to the Royal Fishing Company, after 1672 - death.

8. Patronage

Types: Gentry, Merchant, Aristrocrat

Sir Philip Warwick strongly recommended him to various offices during 1660s-1670s. (Source on patronage: Birch, History of Royal Society, 4, 232-4.)

Collins dedicated his book on navigation to the Governor and leaders of the East India Company.

The Earl of Shaftesbury used Collins' knowledge of accounting when Shaftesbury was Lord Chancellor.

9. Technological Involvement

Types: Applied Mathematics, Navigation, Cartography, Hydraulics

Collins is said to have applied mathematics in business and administration. I assume that this refers to his publications on accounting, compound interest, annuities, etc.

He published on sundials, and also on navigational trigonometry.

There was also a book on the description and use of the quadrant, and a paper on cartography in the Philosophical Transactions.

Collins was appointed to consider a proposed canal between the Isis and the Avon. It was on the trip to Oxford in 1683 to view the lay of the land that he caught what proved to be his fatal illness.

10. Scientific Societies

Membership: Royal Society

Collins was a mathematical intelligencer, whose correspondence with Barrow, Oldenburg, Newton, Willis, Bertet, Borelli, Huygens, Sluse, Leibniz, Tschirnhaus. et al., was a channel of communication between them. He saw a number of important mathematical texts through the press, especially Salusbury's Mathematical Collections, Horrocks' Works, and individual works by Wallis and Barrow.

Royal Society, 1667-83.

Sources

1. Birch, History of Royal Society, 4, 232-4.
2. Dictionary of National Biography (repr., London: Oxford University Press, 1949-1950), 4, 824-5. Anthony à Wood, Fasti oxonienses, (attached with separate pagination to Athenae oxonienses, 4 vols. (London, 1813-20),) 2, 202-4.
3. H.W. Turnbull, James Gregory Tercentenary Memorial Volume, (London, 1939), pp. 16-18. QA3 G822 H.S. Allen, "James Gregory, John Collins, and Some Early Scientific Instruments," Nature, 121 (1928), 456.

Compiled by:

Richard S. Westfall

Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Indiana University

Note: the creators of the Galileo Project and this catalogue cannot answer email on geneological questions.