Barrow

Barrow, ISAAC, a mathematician and divine, was born in 1630 in London, where his father was linen-drawer to Charles I. At the Charterhouse he was chiefly distinguished for pugnacity; but at Felstead, in Essex, his next school, he greatly improved; and in 1643 he was catered at Peterhouse, Cambridge, under his uncle, Isaac Barrow, then a fellow of that college, and finally Bishop of St Asaph. In 1645, before he had come into residence, his uncle was ejected; so he went instead to Trinity College, where he became B.A. in 1648, fellow in 1649, and M.A. in 1652. Finding that to be a good theologian he must know chronology, that chronology implies astronomy, and astronomy mathematics, he applied himself to the latter science with distinguished success. To the classics he had already devoted much study, and on the vacancy of the Greek chair (1654), he was recommended for the office; but a suspicion of Arminianism is said to have interfered with his success. After this disappointment he went abroad (1655), and travelled four years through France and Italy, to Smyrna and Constantinople, back to Venice, and home through Germany and Holland. On the voyage from Leghorn to Smyrna, his determined personal courage seems to have been instrumental in scaring away an Algerine pirate, after a brisk exchange of shots. Soon after his return he took orders (1659), and in the following year was appointed professor of Greek. In 1662 he received the chair of Geometry at Gresham College, London, which, on his appointment to the Lucasian professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge (1663), he thought it his duty to resign. The latter also he resigned in 1669, in favour of his pupil Isaac Newton. On quitting his professorship, he obtained from his uncle a small sinecure in Wales, and from Dr Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury, a prebend in that cathedral. He devoted the revenues of both to charitable purposes, and resigned them in 1672, on being appointed by the king Master of Trinity College. To him, while in this office, is due the foundation of the Trinity library, which is one of the chief ornaments of Cambridge. In 1675 he was nominated vice-chancellor of the university; in 1677 he died on a visit to London, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was only 47, but by his writings and the force of his personal character, he had achieved a reputation which time has left unimpaired. Of his mathematical works, the principal are his Lectiones Geometricæ and Lectiones Opticæ, on which his contemporary fame was chiefly based, and which show him as an immediate precursor of Newton and Leibnitz. As a theologian, his fame rests mainly on his posthumous Treatise on the Pope's Supremacy, and on his eloquent sermons, unmatched as specimens of clear, exhaustive, vigorous disquisition. Their length, we may add, was excessive. One, on charity, lasted three hours and a half; and at Westminster Abbey, he once detained the audience so long that they got the organ to play 'till they had blown him down.' Far the best edition of Barrow's English theological works is that by the Rev. A. Napier (9 vols. Camb. 1859), with a memoir by Dr Whewell, who in 1860 also edited his Latin mathematical works, some of which have been translated.