Thomas Exley

Thomas Exley was an English schoolmaster who lived from 9 December 1774 to 17 February 1855. He taught and occasionally published on mathematics, but was better known for advancing controversial scientific theories and for theological writing connected with Methodism. Born in Gowdall near Snaith in Yorkshire, he showed an early taste for mathematics, taught in Manchester and Huddersfield, and settled in Bristol at the end of 1799, where in 1802 he solved some challenging questions printed in a local paper. With William Moore Johnson he compiled The Imperial Encyclopaedia in 1812, and in 1813 he received an honorary MA from King's College, Aberdeen. His method for extracting cube roots drew favourable notice, and W. G. Horner mentioned it in a paper read to the Royal Society. He also wrote on Euclid's twelfth axiom, natural philosophy and optics, and was an early member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His library passed through his son to what is now the Exley Collection at the University of Bristol.