by Christoph J. Scriba
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Collins, John (1626-1683), mathematician and scientific administrator, was born on 5 March 1626 at Wood Eaton near Oxford, the son of a poor nonconformist minister. Though not allowed to preach in church, Collins's father was permitted to do so in prisons, and he added to his small income by proof-reading for a publisher. Nevertheless, his financial situation did not allow him to provide for the higher education of his son.
Collins attended a grammar school in the Oxford area, but when orphaned at the age of thirteen he became an apprentice of the bookseller Thomas Allam, outside the Turl Gate, Oxford. After Allam's business failed, he worked for three years as a junior clerk under John Marr, clerk of the kitchen to the prince of Wales (afterwards Charles II). Marr, eminently skilled in mathematics, had constructed sundials for the king's garden. With him Collins began to learn accounting and several areas of applied mathematics, including dialling (the theory of the construction of sundials), and during this time he probably lived at court. About the time that the king removed to Oxford, Collins went to sea for seven years (1642-9) on board an English merchantman, engaged as man-of-war in the Venetian service. He became acquainted with all aspects of navigation and, in his leisure time, continued his education in accounting, mathematics, and Latin.
On his return to London, Collins earned his living as an accountant and teacher of writing (of which his clear hand is a proof) and mathematics. As accountant to the allom (alum) farmers he built up a network of correspondents that later helped him to procure books and mathematical news from overseas. About 1670 he married Bellona, laundress of the table linen to the queen, and the younger daughter of William Austen, head cook to Charles II; they had seven children.
After the Restoration, Collins was appointed accountant to the Excise Office, a post he held for about a decade. In March 1669 he declined a lucrative offer from the surveyor-general, Sir James Shaen, to go to Ireland. In 1671 he lived in a house 'next to the sign of the Three Crowns in Bloomsbury Market, London' (Rigaud, 1.140). For about three years he was secretary to the council of plantations, exchanging this post in 1672 for that of manager of the farthing office, when he moved to a 'fair dwelling-house' (1.201) in or near Fenchurch Street. This post, however, ceased to exist about five years later, when Collins failed with his arguments against the issue of tin farthings.
For lack of capital Collins was unable to realize his intention of setting up a stationer's shop and printing books (a pension of £50 a year from the Excise Office was not paid for several years). Thus in 1677 he accepted a small post as accountant to the Royal Fishery Company. In spite of good credentials and patronage (Sir Philip Warwick strongly recommended him to various offices), he was not able to obtain a well-paid permanent office. Among the various remunerative tasks he engaged in was the disentangling of intricate accounts, a facility for which he became well known.
In spite of his limited education, in October 1667 Collins was elected fellow of the Royal Society. It was here that he had the opportunity to render the services for which he is remembered. For about ten years he served the society as a kind of unofficial secretary for all kinds of mathematical business. (The official secretary, until his death in 1677, was Henry Oldenburg who, in mathematical questions, relied heavily upon Collins's advice and assistance.) Collins conducted an extensive correspondence with some of the leading mathematicians in Britain and abroad, and he also drafted the mathematical details for Oldenburg's correspondence with these mathematicians (who included Barrow, Gregory, Huygens, Leibniz, Newton, Pell, Sluse, Tschirnhaus, and Wallis among others); Isaac Barrow called him 'Mersennus Anglus'. Collins obtained current mathematical news and foreign books for the Royal Society and its fellows, often in exchange for British scientific publications.
Collins was extremely well acquainted with the publishing business, especially in London. In the difficult years after the great plague (1665) and the fire of London (1666) he saw through the press several important mathematical and scientific works: Thomas Salusbury's Mathematical Collections (1661-5); Isaac Barrow's Lectiones opticae (1669), Lectiones geometricae (1670), and Archimedes (1675); John Wallis's Mechanica (1669-71) and Algebra (1685); Jeremiah Horrocks's Opera posthuma (1672-8); and others. However, his attempts to have some of Newton's early mathematical works published had no success.
Collins's own published works reveal competence in elementary applied mathematics but not a creative mind. His most important books are An Introduction to Merchants' Accompts (1652), The Sector on a Quadrant (1658), Geometrical Dialling (1659), and The Mariners' Plain Scale (1659). He also published A Plea for the Bringing in of Irish Cattel, and Keeping out Fish Caught by Foreigners ... (1680) and Salt and Fishery (1682). His main interest in the field of theoretical mathematics was the (numerical) solution of algebraic equations; for an understanding of the new infinitesimal methods he lacked the necessary background. He greatly underestimated the seminal force of the mathematical ideas of Descartes, while propagating the significance of the contributions of some of his countrymen, such as Oughtred or Harriot.
Collins was described as 'a man of good arts, and yet great simplicity; able, but no ways forward', and of great modesty. His skill in accounting seems to have been generally acknowledged, as well as his understanding of the intricacies of trade. Above all his acquaintances praised his disinterested love of science and willingness to serve it wherever he could. He was a lover of music and an able player of the viol da gamba.
In 1682 Collins was invited to advise on a proposed canal between the Isis and the Avon, and while engaged on the project became ill with asthma and consumption (which he was said to have contracted while riding on a hot day and drinking too much cider). He never recovered and died at his lodgings on Garlick Hill in London on 10 November 1683; he was buried in the parish church of St James Garlickhythe on 13 November.
Due to his extensive correspondence, Collins's papers are an important source for the study of Restoration science. Most of them, formerly in private hands, were rarely made available to historians, but are now in Cambridge University Library. Some of them were printed in Rigaud's Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century (1841). Always eager to establish the priority of English mathematicians, Collins collected letters written by Newton in the 1670s on the subject of the infinitesimal calculus, partly with the intention of preparing a book on English mathematical achievements. After the outbreak of the priority dispute between Newton and Leibniz, well after Collins's death, this collection became an important source of evidence, and an edited selection of the letters was published on behalf of the Royal Society as Commercium epistolicum (1712).
CHRISTOPH J. SCRIBA
Sources
'biography', BL, 'Biographical anecdotes, A-C', Add. MS 4221, fols. 331r-339r
T. Birch, The history of the Royal Society of London, 4 vols. (1756-7), vol. 4, pp. 232-4
S. P. Rigaud and S. J. Rigaud, eds., Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century, 2 vols. (1841); repr. (1965)
Wood, Ath. Oxon.: Fasti (1820), 202-4
D. T. Whiteside, 'Collins, John', DSB
H. W. Turnbull, ed., James Gregory tercentenary memorial volume (1939), 16-18
DNB
private information (2004)
Archives
BL, papers, Sloane MSS 2279, 2281
CUL
RS, corresp. and papers | BL, corresp. with John Pell, Add. MSS 4278-4476
CUL, corresp. with Sir Isaac Newton
U. St Andr. L., corresp. with James Gregory
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