JOHN

See also:

• JOHN GREAVES (1602–1652)

GREAVES (1602–1652)  , English mathematician and antiquary, was the eldest son of John Greaves, rector of Cole-more, near Alresford in Hampshire . He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and in 1630 was chosen professor of geometry in Gresham College, London . After travelling in Europe, he visited the East in 1637, where he collected a considerable number of Arabic, Persian and Greek manuscripts, and made a more accurate survey of the pyramids of Egypt than any traveller who had preceded him . On his return to Europe he visited a second time several parts of Italy, and during his stay at Rome instituted inquiries into the ancient weights and measures . In 1643 he was appointed to the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford, but he was deprived of his Gresham professorship for having neglected its duties . In 1645 he essayed a reformation of the calendar, but his plan was not adopted . In 1648 he lost both his fellowship and his Savilian chair on account of his adherence to the royalist party . But his private fortune more than sufficed for all his wants till his death on the 8th of October 1652 . Besides his papers in the Philosophical Transactions, the principal works of Greaves are Pyramidographia, or a Description of tke Pyramids in Egypt (1646); A Discourse on the Roman Foot and Denarius (1649); and Elementa linguae Persicae (1649) . His miscellaneous works were published in 1737 by Dr Thomas Birch, with a biographical notice of the author . See also Smith's Vita quorundam erudit. virorum and Ward's Gresham Professors .