Alexander Wylie (

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

: 偉烈亞力,

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...

: 伟烈亚力) (6 April 181510 February 1887), was a British

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

Christian

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

to China. He is known for his translation work and scholarship during the late

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

Early life

Wylie was born in London, and went to school at Drumlithie,

Kincardineshire Kincardineshire, also known as the Mearns (from the Scottish Gaelic meaning "the Stewartry"), is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area on the coast of northeast Scotland. It is bounded by Aberdeenshire on the north and ...

, and at

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

. While apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, Wylie picked up a Chinese grammar book written in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

(the ''Notitia linguae sinicae'' by Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare).

China

After having mastered Latin, he went on to make such good progress in Chinese that, in 1846,

James Legge James Legge (; 20 December 181529 November 1897) was a Scottish linguist, missionary, sinologist, and translator who was best known as an early translator of Classical Chinese texts into English. Legge served as a representative of the London ...

engaged him to superintend the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational miss ...

's press in Shanghai. In this position, he acquired a wide knowledge of Chinese religion and civilisation, and especially of mathematics, enabling him to demonstrate in his paper ''Jottings on the Science of the Chinese'' that Sir George Horner's

method Method ( grc, μέθοδος, methodos) literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In recent centuries it more often means a prescribed process for completing a task. It may refer to: *Scien ...

(1819) of solving equations of all orders had been known to the Chinese mathematicians of the 14th century. He made several journeys into the interior, notably in 1858 with

Lord Elgin Earl of Elgin is a title in the Peerage of Scotland, created in 1633 for Thomas Bruce, 3rd Lord Kinloss. He was later created Baron Bruce, of Whorlton in the County of York, in the Peerage of England on 30 July 1641. The Earl of Elgin is the ...

on a British Navy gunboat up the

Yangtze The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows ...

and to Nanking, where he served as one member of a delegation of three to meet with officials of the

Taiping __NOTOC__ Taiping, Tai-p’ing, or Tai Ping most often refers to: Chinese history * Princess Taiping (died 713), Tang dynasty princess * Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), civil war in southern China ** Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851–1864), the re ...

, and in 1868 with

Griffith John Griffith John ( zh, t=楊格非, p=Yáng Géfēi; 14 December 1831 – 25 July 1912) was a Welsh Christian missionary and translator in China. A member of the Congregational church, he was a pioneer evangelist with the London Missionary Society ...

to the capital of

Szechuen Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

and the source of the

Han Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...

. He completed the distribution of one million Chinese New Testaments provided by the

British and Foreign Bible Society The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world. The Soc ...

's special fund of 1855. From 1863 he was an agent of the

. He was succeeded by Samuel Dyer, Junior, the son of

Samuel Dyer Samuel Dyer (台約爾, 20 February 1804 – 24 October 1843) was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China in the Congregationalist tradition who worked among the Chinese in Malaysia. He arrived in Penang in 1827. Dyer, his wife Ma ...

and brother-in-law of

Hudson Taylor James Hudson Taylor (; 21 May 1832 – 3 June 1905) was a British Baptist Christian missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM, now OMF International). Taylor spent 51 years in China. The society that he began was respons ...

. In Chinese, he translated books on

arithmetic Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers— addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th ...

calculus Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...

( Loomis),

algebra Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. Elementary a ...

(

De Morgan De Morgan or de Morgan is a surname, and may refer to: * Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), British mathematician and logician. ** De Morgan's laws (or De Morgan's theorem), a set of rules from propositional logic. ** The De Morgan Medal, a trien ...

's),

mechanics Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objects r ...

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...

( Herschel's), in collaboration with

Li Shanlan Li Shanlan (李善蘭, courtesy name: Renshu 壬叔, art name: Qiuren 秋紉) (1810 – 1882) was a Chinese mathematician of the Qing Dynasty. A native of Haining, Zhejiang, he was fascinated by mathematics since childhood, beginning with the '' ...

, and ''The Marine Steam Engine'' (TJ Main and T Brown), as well as translations of the

Gospel According to Matthew Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

and the

Gospel According to Mark The Gospel of Mark), or simply Mark (which is also its most common form of abbreviation). is the second of the four canonical gospels and of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to ...

. In English his chief works were ''Jottings on the Science of the Chinese'', published in 1853, Shanghai; a collection of articles published under the title ''Chinese Researches by Alexander Wylie'' (Shanghai, 1897); ''Memorials of Protestant Missionaries'' (1867); ''Notes on Chinese Literature'' (Shanghai, 1867). He also published an article on the Nestorian Tablet in

Xian Xi'an ( , ; ; Chinese: ), frequently spelled as Xian and also known by other names, is the capital of Shaanxi Province. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong Plain, the city is the third most populous city in Western China, after Chongqin ...

Retirement

Grave of Alexander Wylie in Highgate Cemetery

His health and eyesight were failing and he returned to London in 1877. In 1881 and 1882 he sold his collection of some 500 Chinese titles to the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second- ...

; the collection was catalogued by David Helliwell in 1985. Blind and bed-ridden, he died at his home, 18 Christchurch Road,

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

on 6 February 1887 and was buried on the western side of

Highgate Cemetery Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East Cemeteries. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as ...

(plot no:15429).

Works

* * *

Notes

References