Works
Many of Pell's manuscripts fell into the hands of Richard Busby, master of Westminster School, and afterwards came into the possession of the Royal Society; they are still preserved in nearly forty folio volumes in the British Library, which contain, not only Pell's own memoirs, but much of his correspondence with the mathematicians of his time.
His chief works are:
- Astronomical History of Observations of Heavenly Motions and Appearances (1634)
- Ecliptica prognostica (1634)
- An Idea of Mathematicks (1638)
- Controversy with Longomontanus concerning the Quadrature of the Circle (1646?)
- A Table of Ten Thousand Square Numbers (fol.; 1672).
The Idea was a short manifesto. It made three suggestions: a mathematical encyclopedia and bibliography; a complete mathematics research library and collection of instruments, with state sponsorship; and a three-volume comprehensive set of mathematical textbooks, able to convey the state of the art to any scholar.
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“The appetite of workers works for them; their hunger urges them on.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 16:26.
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My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)