Surveyor of the Restoration

Abstract

Frances Willmoth, Sir Jonas Moore: Practical Mathematics and Restoration Science . Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1993. Pp.xi+244. £35. ISBN 0-85115-321-6 Jonas Moore (1617-79) is a slightly anomalous figure in the seventeenth- century scientific scene, well known but in some ways obscure. He belongs partly to the history of elementary mathematics: his major publication was Moores Arithmetick (1650 and several other editions); this is largely but not wholly based on the work of Oughtred, whom Moore cited as one to whom he owed ‘all the Mathematicall Knowledge I have’ (a statement not to be taken literally, as Dr Willmoth stresses). That few copies now survive shows, as with most works of arithmetic at the time, that it was used by practical men and read to death. Moore belongs as well to the history of practical mathematics: he worked for some seven years in the 1650s as Surveyor to the Earl of Bedford’s Fen Drainage Company and produced an often-reprinted map at the end of it; this led to his being asked in 1663 to undertake an expedition to Tangier which resulted in a map of the city and its confines. He also produced a map of the Thames in 1663 and a survey of London after the Great Fire. In 1663 he became Surveyor of the Ordnance, based on the Tower of London. From this position he found it easy to enter into the scientific world of Restoration London: he was elected F.R.S. in 1674 and immediately put on the Council (1675-78); he became the patron of many young practical mathematicians; perhaps Moore’s greatest claim to fame was his patronage of the young John Flamsteed and his critical role in creating for Flamsteed the post of Astronomer Royal (1675) and helping to supply him with the necessary instruments.