Early Life
He was born at Southwick in Sussex. He was educated at Steyning Grammar School, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen. During his university career he became an accomplished linguist, and even before he took his B.A. degree (in 1629) corresponded with Henry Briggs and other mathematicians. In 1630 he was teaching in the short-lived Chichester Academy, set up by Samuel Hartlib. Shortly afterwards he married Ithamaria Reginald (also rendered variously as Ithamara or Ithumaria, with the surname Reginolles), sister of Bathsua Makin.
Pell spent much of the 1630s working under Hartlib's influence, on a variety of topics in the area of pedagogy, encyclopedism and pansophy, combinatorics and the legacy of Trithemius. By 1638 he had formulated a proposal for a universal language. In mathematics, he concentrated on expanding the scope of algebra in the theory of equations, and on mathematical tables. As part of a joint lobbying effort with Hartlib to find himself support to continue as a researcher, he had his short Idea of Mathematics printed in October 1638. The campaign brought interested responses from Johann Moriaen and Marin Mersenne.
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