Humphry Ditton
British mathematician and theologian (1675-1715)
Humphry Ditton (29 May 1675 – 15 October 1715) was an English mathematician. He was the author of several influential works.
Life
Ditton was born on 29 May 1675 in Salisbury, the only son of Humphry Ditton, gentleman and ardent nonconformist, and Miss Luttrell of Dunster Castle, near Taunton. He studied theology privately, and was for some time also a dissenting minister, at Tonbridge, where he married a Miss Ball.
On his father's death, Ditton devoted himself mainly to the study of mathematics. Through the influence of Isaac Newton he was elected mathematical master in Christ's Hospital. He produced also a theological work, A Discourse Concerning the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which sought to take a mathematical, deductive approach to the subject. The first of its four editions appeared in 1712 and it was translated into French and German. He was unable to complete his response to various criticisms of the work before his death.
A diary containing Ditton's religious meditations appeared posthumously in the Gospel Magazine (September 1777, pp.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1637291. VIAF identifies the subject as 66820604. The Library of Congress control number is n86827673. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1675, 1715, 1712 and 1777.
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This entry incorporates text from “Humphry Ditton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.