Humphry Ditton

Humphry Ditton (29 May 1675 – 15 October 1715) was an English mathematician.

Ditton was born at Salisbury. He studied theology, and was for some years a dissenting minister at Tonbridge, but on the death of his father he devoted himself to the congenial study of mathematics. Through the influence of Isaac Newton he was elected mathematical master in Christ's Hospital.

He was author of the following memoirs and treatises:

In 1709 he published the Synopsis Algebraica of John Alexander, with additions and corrections. In his Treatise on Perspective (1712) he explained is mathematical principles; and anticipated the method afterwards elaborated by Brook Taylor.

In 1714 Ditton published his Discourse on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and The New Law of Fluids, or a Discourse concerning the Ascent of Liquids in exact Geometrical Figures, between two nearly contiguous Surfaces. To this was annexed a tract ("Matter not a Cogitative Substance") to demonstrate the impossibility of thinking or perception being the result of any combination of the parts of matter and motion. There was also added an advertisement, from him and William Whiston, concerning a method for discovering the longitude, which it seems they had published about half a year earlier. Although the method had been approved by Newton before being presented to the Board of Longitude, and successfully practised in finding the longitude between Paris and Vienna, the board determined against it. Jonathan Swift wrote mockingly about this plan; Ditton died in the following year.

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