Jonas Moore

Sir Jonas Moore (1617 to 1679) was an English mathematician, surveyor, ordnance officer and patron of astronomy, born into a yeoman farming family in Lancashire. By 1650 he was an established mathematics teacher and had published his first book, Moores Arithmetick. He worked on draining the Great Level of the Fens, producing a sixteen sheet map of it in 1658, and took part in building the Mole at Tangier. He became Surveyor General of the Ordnance in 1669, was knighted in 1673 and was elected to the Royal Society in 1674. His wealth and position let him become a patron of John Flamsteed and a driving force behind the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, for which he paid for much of the foundation equipment. He is also credited with the first use of the abbreviation cos for the cosine, and he began writing A New Systeme of the Mathematicks for the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital.