English mathematician (*1616 – †1703)
People connected to John Wallis
He gave infinity its symbol—∞—and cracked codes for Parliament while laying groundwork for calculus a generation before Newton walked in.
John Wallis was an English clergyman and mathematician born 3 December 1616. Between 1643 and 1689 he served as chief cryptographer for Parliament and later the royal court, reading encrypted messages while advancing pure mathematics in parallel. He extended Cavalieri's method of indivisibles through interpolation and applied Kepler's principle of continuity to develop techniques for evaluating integrals—steps that edged toward the calculus Newton would formalize. He introduced ∞ to represent infinity and 1/∞ for the infinitesimal, symbols that stuck. He died 8 November 1703, recognized as one…
Sourced, dated quotes from John Wallis
Let as many Numbers, as you please, be proposed to be Combined: Suppose Five, which we will call a b c d e. Put, in so many Lines, Numbers, in duple proportion, beginning with 1.
Suppose we a certain Number of things exposed, different each from other, as a, b, c, d, e, &c. The question is, how many ways the order of these may be varied?
You may find this work (if I judge rightly) quite new. For I see no reason why I should not proclaim it; nor do I believe that others will take it wrongly.
This method of mine takes its beginnings where Cavalieri ends his Method of indivisibles.
I came across the mathematical writings of Torricelli... which... I read in... 1651... where... he expounds the geometry of indivisibles of Cavalieri.
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