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. 393–403; December 1777, pp. 437–441). concerning a method for discovering the longitude, which it seems they had published about half a year earlier. Although the method had been approved by Newton before being presented to the Board of Longitude, and successfully practised in finding the longitude between Paris and Vienna, the board determined against it.
Ditton died in the following year, and was buried in Christ Church Greyfriars in central London.