Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hellins, John

1412861Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 25 — Hellins, John1891Robert Edward Anderson

HELLINS, JOHN (d. 1827), mathematician and astronomer, was son of a labourer at Ashreyney, near Chumleigh, Devonshire, and after being bound as a parish apprentice to a cooper at Chumleigh, worked at that trade till he was about twenty years of age. Having meanwhile taught himself elementary mathematics, he became master of a small school at Bishop's Tawton, and made the acquaintance of Malachy Hitchins [q. v.], vicar of St. Hilary and Gwinear, Cornwall, through whose influence (Polwhele, History of Cornwall, v. 107) he was appointed an assistant in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich under Dr. Maskelyne. While so employed Hellins studied Latin and Greek and qualified himself for holy orders. He was curate of Constantine in Cornwall (1779–83) and afterwards of Greens Norton, near Towcester, and in 1790 was presented to the vicarage of Potterspury in Northamptonshire. Admitted fellow of the Royal Society in 1796, he gained the Copley medal in 1798 by his ‘improved solution of a problem in physical astronomy, by which swiftly converging series are obtained which are useful in computing the perturbations of the motions of the Earth, Mars, and Venus by their mutual attractions.’ Other important papers by Hellins, which appeared in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ were ‘Two Theorems for computing Logarithms,’ 1780; ‘New Method of finding the Equal Roots of an Equation by Division,’ 1782; ‘Dr. Halley's Method of computing the Quadrature of the Circle improved,’ 1794; ‘Of Rectification,’ &c., 1802.

In 1787 Hellins revised Fenning's ‘Young Algebraist's Companion,’ and in 1788 issued ‘Mathematical Essays containing new Improvements and Discoveries,’ London, 4to; and in 1791 wrote two of the tracts in Maseres' ‘Scriptores Logarithmici.’ From 1795 to 1814 he wrote a series of mathematical articles in the ‘British Critic,’ e.g. on Wales's ‘Method of finding the Longitude,’ vi. 413; Agnesi's ‘Analytical Institutions,’ xxiii. 143, xxiv. 653, xxv. 141; Keith's ‘Trigonometry,’ xxxi. 489; Baily's ‘Doctrine of Interest and Annuities,’ xxxviii. 622, xliii. 502. In 1800 Hellins graduated B.D. at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1806, when Windham, the minister of war, was projecting his new military system, Hellins furnished all the calculations and tables on which it was based. Hellins died in March 1827, and was buried 9 April. On 10 Nov. 1794 he married Miss Anne Brock of North Tawton, Devonshire, and by her he left one son.

[Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vi. 40–3, vii. 626–7, 669; Polwhele's Hist. of Cornwall, ut supra; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. i. 227.]

R. E. A.