Davis, William

(1771/2-1807), mathematician and publisher

by G. J. Gray, rev. Ruth Wallis

© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved

Davis, William (1771/2-1807), mathematician and publisher, probably made his early career as a surveyor and teacher of mathematics. He is first known in 1796 and 1797, as a contributor to mathematical periodicals. About this time he must have issued his first publication, An Easy and Comprehensive Description and Use of the Globes, in an edition which is as yet untraced. In 1798, the year in which the second edition of this work was published, he was a bookseller at 2 Albion Buildings, Aldersgate Street, London; and he described himself as a member of the Mathematical and Philosophical Society of London. In the same year he published A Complete Treatise of Land Surveying, a popular work which went through five editions by 1813; it has a five-page subscription list in which many of the provincial names are from Cheshire, Denbighshire, and Flint, from which it may be hazarded that he had worked in those parts before establishing himself in London. In 1798 he also launched the Companion to the Gentleman's Diary, a mathematical annual renamed in the following year the Gentleman's Mathematical Companion after objections from Charles Wildbore, the editor of the Gentleman's Diary.

Davis was married; his wife's name was Anne. His publishing business produced a steady flow of essential mathematical texts. In 1803 he brought out a three-volume edition of Andrew Motte's English translation of Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, which he dedicated to the astronomer royal, Nevil Maskelyne. Motte's 1729 translation is still regarded as the best, and Davis's edition made this available to a number of generations of nineteenth-century students. In 1805 Davis revised Thomas Simpson's The Doctrine and Application of Fluxions, which he published together with a life of the author. He also issued 'Keys' to a number of John Bonnycastle's elementary mathematical textbooks, a new edition of Daniel Fenning's The Young Algebraist's Companion, and, on a more advanced level, brought out a new edition of Colin MacLaurin's Treatise of Fluxions, as well as of John Rowe's Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions.

Davis continued to edit his annual Mathematical Companion up to his death at the age of thirty-five, on 8 February 1807. Considering that he had simultaneously attended to his business, his mathematical output over the space of ten years was quite remarkable. After his death the Mathematical Companion was edited by John Hampshire, who died in 1825, and it ceased with the number for 1827. Davis's 'mathematical and philosophical book warehouse' at Aldersgate was continued by his widow, who published the fifth edition of his Complete Treatise in 1813, with a portrait of her husband opposite the title-page. Anne Davis remarried: her second husband was a London bookseller and printer by the name of J. S. Dickson, and in 1814 the name of the firm was changed to Davis and Dickson. She died on 15 October 1822, when the business was wound up. The stock was auctioned in November and December 1834, and in May 1836. Its sale catalogue was of considerable interest to mathematical antiquaries.

G. J. GRAY, rev. RUTH WALLIS

Sources  
W. Davis, ed., A Companion to the Gentleman's Diary (1798); Gentleman's Mathematical Companion (1799-1807)
J. Hampshire, ed., Gentleman's Mathematical Companion (1808-25)
R. C. Archibald, 'Notes on some minor English mathematical serials', Mathematical Gazette, 14 (1928-9), 379-400, esp. 392
P. J. Wallis and R. V. Wallis, Newton and Newtoniana, 1672-1975 (1977), 15-16

Likenesses  
J. S. Dickson, stipple (after W. Allen), BM, NPG; repro. in W. Davis, A treatise on land surveying, 5th edn (1813), frontispiece [see illus.]
portrait, UCL, Graves Collection, 7 e 2
portrait, BL


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