Collins, John

(b. Wood Eaton, near Oxford, England, 5 March 1625; d. London, England, 10 November 1683),

algebra.

Removed from local grammar school after the death of his father, a “poore Minister”, orphaned him, Collins was briefly apprenticed (at thirteen) to an Oxford bookseller “who failing I lived three years at Court [as kitchen clerkland in this space forgot the Latin I had.” From 1642, on the outbreak of the Civil War, he spent seven years in the Mediterranean as a seaman “in the Venetian service against ye Turke.” On his return to London he set himself up as “Accountant philomath” (mathematics teacher). After the Restoration in 1660 Collins held a variety of minor government posts, notably “in keeping of Accompts” in the Excise Office, and for fifteen years managed the Farthing Office, but after its closure became once more a lowly accountant with the Fishery Company. He thought long about becoming a stationer but lacked the necessary capital; yet in a private capacity he did much to revive the London book trade after the disastrous 1666 fire, using to the full his own limited resources and the foreign contacts his employment gave him. Although he had “no Universitie education,” he was deservedly elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1667.

On his own assessment Collins’ mathematical attainments were “meane, yet I have an ardent love to these studies… endeavouring to raise a Catalogue of Math’ Bookes and to procure scarce ones for the use of the Royall Society and my owne delight.” His published works—Merchants Accompts, Decimal Arithmetick, Geometricall Dyalling, and Mariners Plain Scale, among others—are essentially derivative but reveal his competence in business arithmetic, navigational trigonometry, sundial construction, and other applications of elementary mathematics; his papers on theory of equations and his critique of Descartes’s Géométrie are uninspiring.

Collins’ scientific importance lies rather in his untiring effort, by correspondence and word of mouth, to be an efficient “intelligencer” of current mathematical news and to promote scientific learning: with justice, Isac Barrow dubbed him “Mersennus Anglus.” Between 1662, when he first met Barrow, and 1677, when the deaths of Barrow and Oldenburg (following on that of James Gregory in 1675), coupled with a growing reluctance on the part of Newton and Wallis to continue a letter exchange and the worries of his own straitened financial circumstances, effectively terminated it, Collins carried on an extensive correspondence with some of the finest exact scientists of his day, not only with his compatriots but with Bertet, Borelli, and (through Oldenburg) with Huygens, Sluse, Leibniz, and Tschirnhausen, Further, deploying his specialized knowledge of the book trade to advantage, Collins saw through press in London such substantial works as Thomas Salusbury’s Mathematical Collections, Barrow’s Lectiones and Archimedes, Wallis’ Mechanics and Algebra, Horrocks’ Opera posthuma, and Sherburne’s Manilius. He sought likewise, but in vain, to have several of Newton’s early mathematical works published. For the modern historian of science, Collins’ still-intact collection of some 2,000 books and uncounted original manuscripts of such men as Newton, Barrow, and Halley is a major primary source.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. “The first thing I published was about a quire of Paper concerning Merchants Accompts [a rare folio broadsheet (London, 1652), repr. in G. de Malyne, Consuetudo: vel, Lex Mercatoria (London, 1656)] which upon later thoughts I found myself unable to amend and was reprinted in May last” (to Wallis, 1666). This reappeared in augmented form as An Introduction to Merchants-Accompts (London, 1674).

Next Collins wrote “a despicable treatise of quadrants [The Sector on a Quadrant… Accomodated [sic] for Dyalling: For the Resolving of All Proportions Instrumentally (London, 1659), a revision of his Description and Use of a General Quadrant (London, 1658)]…. And among these Luxuriances I met with a Dyalling Scheme of M^r Fosters and commented upon y¹[Geometricall Dyalling (London, 1659)] which it is too late to wish undone.” Also in 1659 he issued his Mariners Plain Scale New Plain’d and Navigation by the Mariners Plain Scale.

Posthumously there appeared his Decimal Arithmetick, Simple Interest, “s(London, 1685), an augmentation of his rare 1669 single-sheet equivalent, “Compendium for a Letter Case.” Of his other nonscientific publications his monograph Salt and Fishery (London, 1682) deserves mention for its passages on salt refining and fish curing. In addition, the Philosophical Transactions has several unsigned reviews by Collins and four short articles—2 no. 30 (Dec. 1667), 568–575; 4 , no. 46 (Apr. 1669), 929–934; 6 no. 69 (Mar. 1675), 2093–2096; 14, no. 159 (May 1684), 575–582—dealing with topics in arithmetic and algebra.

His correspondence is preserved in private possession (Shirburn 101.H.1–3), except for a group of letters relating to Newton’s invention of fluxions deposited from it, at Newton’s request, in the Royal Society’s archives in 1712 (now, with some losses, MS LXXXI [Collins’ Descartes critique is no, 39] and smaller collections in the British Museum, the University of St. Andrews, and Cambridge University library.

II. Secondary Literature. Edward Sherburne, in his Sphere of Manilius Made an English Poem (London 1675), app., pp.116–118 (also found as a separate broadsheet,) gives a creditable contemporary impression of Collins’ work up to 1675. Brief sketches by Agnes M. Clerke, in Dictionary of National Biography, XI (1887), 368–369; and H.W. Turnbull, in James Gregory Memorial Volume (London 1939), pp. 16–18, must seve in place of a standard biography, Collins’ letters are printed in Newton’s Commercium Epistolicum (London, 1712): S. P. Rigaud’s Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1841); and in modern editions of the letters of Newton, James Gregory, and Oldenburg.

D. T. Whiteside

Collins, John (1811–74), comic actor and singer. The rather sad‐faced Irish comedian and tenor was perceived as successor to the late Tyrone Power when he made his American debut in 1846. His first appearances were in plays and parts long identified with Power, such as McShane in The Nervous Man and as Teddy Maloney in Teddy the Tiler. Among his other appearances were those in such standard works as The Irish Ambassador, The Irish Attorney, and Born to Good Luck. In 1850 Collins played in The Irish Fortune Hunter, which John Brougham wrote for him. He remained in this country until the mid‐1850s, then returned occasionally, most notably to create the role of Carrickfergus, the hero's buddy, in the first American production of Brougham's The Duke's Motto (1863). His later returns were less successful.