Israel Lyons

Israel Lyons the Younger was a mathematician and botanist, born in Cambridge in 1739 and dead of measles on 1 May 1775, at only thirty-six. The son of a teacher of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge, he was regarded as a prodigy in mathematics, and Robert Smith, master of Trinity College, took him under his wing and paid for his attendance; being of Ashkenazi Jewish origin he could not become an official member of the university. He published a Treatise on Fluxions at nineteen and a survey of Cambridge flora a few years later, delivered botany lectures at Oxford for Joseph Banks, computed tables for the Nautical Almanac, and served as astronomer on the 1773 North Pole voyage led by Constantine Phipps.