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 ...

: 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, and at Chelsea. 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 ...

(the ''Notitia linguae sinicae'' by

Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare (17 July 1666 – 17 September 1736) was a Jesuit missionary to China. Born in Cherbourg, he departed for China in 1698, and worked as a missionary in Guangxi. In 1724, after the Yongzheng Emperor virtually banned Chr ...

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 Lond ...

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 m ...

'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 (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 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 flow ...

and to Nanking, where he served as one member of a delegation of three to meet with officials of the Taiping, and in 1868 with Griffith John to the capital of Szechuen and the source of the Han. 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 S ...

'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 M ...

and brother-in-law of Hudson Taylor. 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 c ...

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

( Loomis),

algebra Algebra () is one of the areas of mathematics, 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 mathem ...

( De Morgan'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 ...

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, and ''The Marine Steam Engine'' (TJ Main and T Brown), as well as translations of the Gospel According to Matthew and the Gospel According to Mark. 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.

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 sec ...

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

* * * Alfred James Broomhall, ''Hudson Taylor & China's Open Century, Book Six: Assault On The Nine'', Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1988 * Henri Cordier, ''The Life and Labours of Alexander Wylie'', London: Trubner & Co, 1887 * David Helliwell, ''A catalogue of the old Chinese books in the Bodleian Library'', Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 1985

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wylie, Alexander 1815 births 1887 deaths British sinologists English Protestant missionaries Protestant missionaries in Sichuan Protestant missionaries in China British expatriates in China Translators of the Bible into Chinese Christian writers Burials at Highgate Cemetery 19th-century translators Missionary linguists