Reuben Burrow

Reuben Burrow (30 December 1747 – 7 June 1792) was an English mathematician and orientalist. Initially a teacher, he was appointed assistant to Maskelyne, then astronomer-royal, at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and was involved in the Schiehallion experiment. He later conducted research in India, becoming one of the first members of the Asiatic Society.

Burrow was born at Hoberley, near Shadwell, Leeds. His father, a small farmer, gave him some schooling, occasionally interrupted by labour on the farm. He showed an ability and keenness for mathematics early on, and after some instruction from a schoolmaster named Crooks at Leeds, he obtained a clerkship in the office of a London merchant and reached London in 1765. A year later he became usher in a school of B. Webb, the ‘celebrated writing-master.’ He next set up as schoolmaster on his own account at Portsmouth, and, after giving up this place in 1770 to become engineer to a projected expedition to Borneo, was appointed assistant to Maskelyne, then astronomer-royal, at Greenwich. Two years afterwards he married Anne Purvis, daughter of a poulterer in Leadenhall Street, and started a school at Greenwich.

In 1774, Burrow aided Maskelyne in his observations in the Schiehallion experiment, for the determination of the Earth's attraction. He complained that his services were insufficiently recognised. Soon afterwards, however, he was appointed ‘mathematical teacher in the drawing-room at the Tower,’ where there was then a training school for artillery officers, afterwards merged into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. His salary was £100 a year. Here he became editor of the Ladies and Gentlemen's Diary, or Royal Almanack. It was started by Thomas Carnan, in opposition to the Ladies' Diary, published by the Stationers' Company and edited by Charles Hutton. The company claimed a monopoly of almanacs, but their claim was disallowed by the court of common pleas, on their bringing an action against Carnan, who published the first number of his diary in December 1775. It continued till 1786, the word 'Gentlemen' being dropped after 1780. Part of it was devoted to mathematical problems by Burrow and various contributors.

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