DITTON, Humphry, an eminent mathematician, was born at Salisbury on the 29th May 1675. Being an only son, his father, observing in him an extraordinary capacity, determined to cultivate it by means of a good education. For this purpose he placed him in a reputable private academy, upon quitting which he at the desire of his father, though against his own inclination, engaged in the profession of divinity, and began to exercise his profession at Tunbridge, in the county of Kent, where he continued to preach some years, during which time he married a lady of that place.

But a weak constitution and the death of his father induced Mr Ditton to quit that profession; and at the persuasion of Dr Harris and Mr Whiston, both eminent mathematicians, he engaged in the study of mathematics, a science to which he had always a strong inclination. In the prosecution of this science he was much encouraged by the success and applause he received, being greatly esteemed by the chief professors of it, and particularly by Sir Isaac New ton, by whose interest and recommendation he was elected master of the new mathematical school in Christ’s Hospital, where he continued till his death, which happened in 1715, in the fortieth year of his age.

Mr Ditton published the following mathematical and other tracts: I. Of the Tangents of Curves, &c. Phil. Trans, vol. xxiii. 2. A Treatise on Spherical Catoptries, published in the Phil. Trans, for 1705, from which it was copied and reprinted in the Acta Eruditorum 1707, and also in the Memoirs of the Academy of Seienees at Paris. 3. General Laws of Nature and Motion, 8vo, 1705. Wolfius mentions this work, and says that it illustrates and renders easy the writings of Galileo, Huygens, and the Principia of Newton. It is also noticed by La Roehe, in the Mémoires de Literature, vol. viii. p. 46. 4. An Institution of Fluxions, containing the first Principles, Operations, and Applications of that admirable method, as invented by Sir Isaac Newton, 8vo, 1706. This work, with additions and alterations, was again published by Mr John Clarke in the year 1726. 5. In 1709 he published the Synopsis Algebraica of John Alexander, with many additions and corrections. 6. His Treatise on Perspective was published in 1712. In this work he explained the principles of that art mathematically; and, besides teaching the [7:8:57]methods then generally practised, gave the first hints of the new method afterwards enlarged upon and improved by Dr Brook Taylor, and which was published in the year 1715. 7. In 1714 Mr Ditton published several pieces, both theological and mathematical, particularly his Discourse on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; and The New Law of Fluids, or a Discourse concerning the Ascent of Liquids, in exact Geometrical Figures, between two nearly contiguous Surfaces.· To this was annexed a tract to demonstrate the impossibility of thinking or perception being the result of any combination of the parts of matter and motion; a subject much agitated about that time. To this work also was added an advertisement from him and Mr Whiston concerning a method for discovering the longitude, which it seems they had published about half a year before. This attempt probably cost our author his life; for although it was approved and countenanced by Sir Isaac Newton before it was presented to the Board of Longitude, and the method had been successfully put in practice in finding the longitude between Paris and Vienna, yet that board then determined against it; so that the disappointment, together with some public ridicule, particularly in a poem written by Dean Swift, affected his health so that he died in the ensuing year, 1715.

In an account of Mr Ditton, prefixed to the German translation of his Discourse on the Resurrection, it is said that he had published, in his own name only, another method for finding the longitude, but which Mr Whiston denied. However, Raphael Levi, a learned Jew, who had studied under Leibnitz, informed the German editor that he well knew that Ditton and Leibnitz had corresponded upon the subject, and that Ditton had sent to Leibnitz a delineation of a machine he had invented for that purpose, which was a piece of mechanism constructed with many wheels like a clock, and which Leibnitz highly approved of for land use, but doubted whether it would answer on board of ship, on account of the motion.