Jonas Moore

Sir Jonas Moore (8 February 1617 to 27 August 1679) was an English mathematician, surveyor, ordnance officer and patron of astronomy, born at Higher White Lee in Higham, in Pendle, Lancashire, the son of a yeoman farmer. By 1650 he was an established mathematics teacher and published Moores Arithmetick. He worked on the draining of the Great Level of the Fens, produced a sixteen-sheet map of it in 1658 and in 1663 and 1664 helped plan the mole at Tangier and mapped the town. Appointed Assistant Surveyor of the Ordnance in 1665 and Surveyor-General in 1669, he was knighted in 1673 and elected to the Royal Society in 1674. His influence as Surveyor-General helped bring about the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, for which he paid out of his own pocket for much of the foundation equipment, including two great clocks by Thomas Tompion. In his last years he was a governor of the Royal Mathematical School at Christ Hospital, and his unfinished New Systeme of the Mathematicks was completed in 1681 with parts by John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley.