MOORE,JONAS, (MATHEMATICAL) AND THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL-OBSERVATORYAT GREENWICH

In the seventeenth century the rapid expansion of trade with the Far E ast and the Americas, together with military rivalry, led the great ma ritime powers to devote much effort to developing a reliable means of determining longitude at sea. In Britain, one expression of this conce rn was the founding of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Tradition g ives the credit for this to Charles II but in fact, as this article de monstrates, a prominent - perhaps dominant - role was played by Jonas Moore, an accomplished and versatile practical mathematician.