John Wallis was born on November 22, 1616 in Ashford, in the United Kingdom. John Wallis’s father was also named John Wallis. His father worked as a minister and then became a minister. When John was born, his mother was Joanna Chapman. Joanna Chapman was his father’s second wife. John had four other siblings, and was the third born. However, when John was only six years old his father died.
His first form of education was in Ashford, however, a plague there caused his family to move. When his family moved, he went to a grammar school in Tenterden, Kent. At the grammar school, he learned a lot of Latin. When he was only thirteen years old, he said that he thought he was ready to go to college. In 1631, he went to another school called the …show more content…
Decoding this letter, helped him make a fortune. For a couple months, he would help the British government decode secret messages during the civil war in Britain. Since he helped the British government during the civil war, they let him be in charge of the St. Gabriel Church in the year 1643. Also, his mother died in 1643. John Wallis inherited the house in Kent when his mother died. A year later in 1644, he became a secretary for a clergy in Westminster. By doing this job, he was able to become a fellowship at the Queen's College in Cambridge. However, he had to give up this fellowship in March 1645. This is because on March 14, 1645, he married Susanna Glyde, and you are not allowed to be a fellowship if you are married. After this, John Wallis returned to London and created the Royal Society, which was full of scientists that talked about nature and environmental science. After the Royal Society, he was then appointed to the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford. In 1655, he wrote a treatise. In the treatise, he wrote about curves and second degree curves. A year later in 1656, he wrote another treatise called the Arithmetica Infinitorum. This treatise was the most important work of his life. In the treatise, it features a lot of significant contributions to math. The first contribution to math in the Arithmetica Infinitorum, was the Law of Indices. In