Allen, Thomas

NAME:

Allen, Thomas

ACHIEVEMENTS:

Contributions to mathematics

NICKNAME/ALIAS:

None

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:

21 December 1542, Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England

DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:

30 September 1632, Gloucester Hall, Cambridge, England. Aged 90

DISCIPLINE:

Mathematician and antiquary

FIELD:

Mathematics

LANGUAGE:

English

PARENTS:

Father: name?

Mother: ?

SIBLINGS:

?

SPOUSE:

None?

CHILDREN:

None?

EDUCATION:

Trinity College, Oxford

MAJOR WORK:

LIFE AND TIMES:

Allen arrived at Oxford University at a time when there was a new interest in science and mathematics. He was elected a fellow of Trinity and among his pupils numbered the mathematician Thomas Hariot and the scholar Kenelm Digby. Allen gave up his fellowship and left the college during his twenties because he was disinclined to take holy orders. Nevertheless, he pursued his studies and gained a wide reputation as a mathematician and antiquarian.

He was taken up by the earl of Northumberland and through him came into contact with the astrologer Dr John Dee.  Elizabeth I*, who consulted Dee, is alleged to have asked for Allen’s advice about a new star and the queen’s favorite, the Earl of Leicester used Allen as his astrologer. Leicester offered to secure a bishopric for Allen but he refused it. He was known as a cheerful and well-tempered man and numbered among his friends Sir Thomas Bodley*,Sir William Camden*,Sir Sir Robert Cotton* andSir John Selden*.  Thomas made many long stays to friends in the country,  and among the uneducated classes was often regarded as a magician because of the esoteric nature of his studies and all the mathematical instruments he owned. The writer John Aubrey* relates that on one occasion the maids of the household were so frightened by the watch they found in his room that they threw it out of the window into the moat; the watch caught on a bough,  which only confirmed their suspicions that an object which went tick-tock on its own was the work of the devil.

ASSESSMENT:

Allen was one of a group of scholars and antiquarians who did much to revive learning in the sixteenth century.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS:

Knew the work of   Fromateel* and   Oughtred*

ONELINER: Thomas Allen, Elizabethan antiquarian

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

DNB