Dee, John

Dee, John

(b London, England, 13 July 1527; d. Mortlake, Surrey, England, December 1608)

mathematrics.

Dee was the son of Roland Dee, a London mercer, and his wife, Johanna Wilde. He was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, receiving the B.A. in 1545 and the M.A. in 1548. He was a fellow of St. John’s and a foundation fellow of Trinity College (1546). He traveled to Louvain briefly in 1547 and to Louvain and Paris in 1548–1551, studying with Gemma Frisius and Gerhardus Mercator. Throughout his life Dee made extended trips to the Continent and maintained cordial relations with scholars there.

For more than twenty-five years Dee acted as adviser to various English voyages of discovery. His treatises on navigation and navigational instruments were deliberately kept in manuscript; most have not survived, and are known only from his later autobiographical writings. His “fruitfull Praeface” to the Billingsley translation of Euclid (1570), on the relations and applications of mathematics, established his fame among the mathematical practitioners. Although translated by Billingsley, the Euclid is unmistakably edited by Dee, for the body of the work, especially the later books, contains many annotations and additional theorems by him.

Although Dee was a man of undoubted scientific talents, his interests always tended toward the occult. His favor in court circles was due largely to his practice of judicial astrology. His interest in alchemy and the search for the philosopher’s stone led to the gradual abandonment of other work. His last scientific treatise was a reasoned defense of calendar reform (1583). From that time on, he retreated almost wholly into mysticism and psychic research. Dee was certainly duped by his medium, Edward Kelley, but he himself was sincere. He felt that he had been ill I rewarded for his many years of serious study and looked for a shortcut to the secrets of the universe through the assistance of angelic spirits.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. A more extensive list is in Thompson Cooper’s article in Dictionary of National Biography, V, 721–729. Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564) is presented in annotated translation by C. H. Josten in Ambix, 12 , nos. 2 and 3 (1964). “A very fruitfull Praeface... specifying the chief mathematical sciences,” in H. Billingsley, trans., Euclid (London, 1570). was reprinted in Euclid’s Elements, T. Rudd, ed. (London, 1651) and, with additional material by Dee, in Euclid’s Elements, J. Leeke and G. Serle, eds. (London, 1661). Parallaticae commentationis praxosque (London, 1573) contains trigonometric theorems for determining stellar parallax, occasioned by the nova of 1572. “A plain discourse... concerning the needful reformation of the Kalendar” (1583) is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Ashmole, 1789, i. “The Compendious Rehearsal of John Dee” (1592), BM Cotton Vitellius C vii, 1, is available in “Autobiographical Tracts of Dr. John Dee,” James Crossley, ed., Chetham Miscellanies, I (Manchester, 1851); it is the main source of biographical information but must be read with caution, since it was written as a request for compensation for injury to Dee’s library and reputation. The Private Diary of John Dee, 1577–1601 was edited by J. O. Halliwell as vol. XIX of Camden Society Publications (London, 1842); a corrected version of the Manchester portions, 1595–1601. was edited by John E. Bailey as Diary, for the Years 1595–1601 (London, 1880).

II. Secondary Literature There is still no adequate biography of Dee. Both Charlotte Fell-Smith, John Dee (London, 1909), and Richard Deacon, John Dee (London, 1968), stress Dee’s nonscientinc activities. The latter has revived the theory, originating with Robert Hooke, that Dee’s conversations with the angels were intelligence reports in code. Frances A. Yates, Theatre of the World (Chicago, 1969), considers Dee as a Renaissance philosopher in the Hermetic tradition. The book contains interesting discussions of Dee’s library and of the mathematical preface to Euclid. It is argued that a revival of interest in Vitruvius was spread among the middle classes of London by Dee’s Vitruvian references in the preface.

The best assessment of Dee’s scientific work may be found in the books of E. G. R. Taylor, especially Tudor Geography (London, 1930) and Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1954).

Dee had a remarkable library, and many MSS owned by him are extant. M. R. James, “Lists of MSS Formerly Owned by John Dee,” a supplement to Transactions of the Bibliographical Society (1921), is the basic work, but many others have been located. See, for example, A. G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (London, 1966).

Joy B. Easton