John Hellins

John Hellins FRS (c. 1749 – 5 April 1827) was an autodidact, schoolteacher, mathematician, astronomer and country parson.

He was born in Devon c. 1749, the son of a poor family, and the parish apprenticed him to a cooper.

He became a schoolteacher and through hard work and patronage became assistant to Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal in 1773.

He went on to become a clergyman, serving as a curate at Constantine, Kerrier (1779–83) and afterwards at Greens Norton, near Towcester. In 1789 he was entered as a 'ten-year man' at Trinity College, Cambridge, and eventually graduated BD in 1800. In 1790 he was presented to the vicarage of Potterspury in Northamptonshire. On 10 November 1794 he married Anne Brock of North Tawton. He founded the village school in Potterspury: today the John Hellins Primary School bears his name.

His mathematician and astronomical learning was noted. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1796. Three years later (1799), he was awarded the Copley Medal largely for his paper on computing the perturbations of planets.

He supervised the translation from Italian of the Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana by Maria Gaetana Agnesi, which was published in 1801 by Taylor and Wilks, London as Analytical Institutions in Four Books

The Gentleman's Magazine in 1828, printed the eulogy on Hellins's life and achievements, given at a meeting of the Royal Society, by Davies Gilbert, its president:

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