He owed his successful career partly to the patronage of the distinguished Bulkeley family of north Wales, and later to the Earl of Macclesfield.
Jones served at sea, teaching mathematics on board ship between 1695 and 1702. After his voyages were over he became a teacher of mathematics in London. He also held a number of posts in government offices.
Jones published Synopsis Palmariorum Matheseos 1706 , a work which was intended for beginners and which included theorem on differential calculus and infinite series .
Navigation was also a topic which interested Jones and his first published work was A New Compendium of the Whole Art of Navigation.
In 1731 he published Discourses of the Natural Philosophy of the Elements.
His son, also named William Jones, was a famous philologist who discovered the Indo-European language group.
Jones owed his successful career partly to the patronage of the distinguished Bulkeley family of north Wales, and later to the Earl of Macclesfield.
As a mathematician, his most noted contribution is his proposal for the use of the symbol π (the Greek letter pi) to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
Jones published Synopsis Palmariorum Matheseos 1706, a work which was intended for beginners and which included theorem on differential calculus and infinite series.
Sir WilliamJones (September 28, 1746 – April 27, 1794) was a British philologist and student of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages.
Jones was born at Beaufort Buildings, Westminster; his father (also named Sir WilliamJones) was a mathematician.
Jones is also indirectly responsible for some of the feel of the English Romantic movement's poetry (including the likes of Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge), as his translations of "eastern" poetical works were a source for that style.
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