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Concept
Isaac Barrow
Summary
Isaac Barrow (October 1630 – 4 May 1677) was an English Christian theologian and mathematician who is generally given credit for his early role in the development of infinitesimal calculus; in particular, for proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus. His work centered on the properties of the tangent; Barrow was the first to calculate the tangents of the kappa curve. He is also notable for being the inaugural holder of the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, a post later held by his student, Isaac Newton.
Barrow was born in London. He was the son of Thomas Barrow, a linen draper by trade. In 1624, Thomas married Ann, daughter of William Buggin of North Cray, Kent and their son Isaac was born in 1630. It appears that Barrow was the only child of this union—certainly the only child to survive infancy. Ann died around 1634, and the widowed father sent the lad to his grandfather, Isaac, the Cambridgeshire J.P., who resided at Spinney Abbey. Within two years, however, Thomas remarried; the new wife was Katherine Oxinden, sister of Henry Oxinden of Maydekin, Kent. From this marriage, he had at least one daughter, Elizabeth (born 1641), and a son, Thomas, who apprenticed to Edward Miller, skinner, and won his release in 1647, emigrating to Barbados in 1680.
Isaac went to school first at Charterhouse (where he was so turbulent and pugnacious that his father was heard to pray that if it pleased God to take any of his children he could best spare Isaac), and subsequently to Felsted School, where he settled and learned under the brilliant puritan Headmaster Martin Holbeach who ten years previously had educated John Wallis. Having learnt Greek, Hebrew, Latin and logic at Felsted, in preparation for university studies, he continued his education at Trinity College, Cambridge; he enrolled there because of an offer of support from an unspecified member of the Walpole family, "an offer that was perhaps prompted by the Walpoles' sympathy for Barrow's adherence to the Royalist cause.
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