John Müller

John Müller, born Johann Müller in the Holy Roman Empire in 1699 and dead at his home in London in June 1784, was a mathematician and engineer. He moved to London in 1736 and in 1741 became deputy head of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, doing all the teaching of Martin Folkes and turning the school into a disciplined cadet academy with the help of Thomas Simpson. He became its first master in 1754 after Folkes died, was later Professor of Artillery and Fortification and preceptor of engineering to the Duke of Gloucester, and retired in 1766. With Colonel Desaguliers he carried out gunnery experiments described in his Treatise of Artillery. His books concern mathematics and fortification: A Mathematical Treatise of 1736 on conic sections and the doctrine of fluxions, treatises on the elementary and practical parts of fortification, Elements of Mathematics of 1748, a Traité analytique of 1760 and New Elements of Mathematics: or, Euclid corrected of 1773.