Alexander Wylie

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Alexander Wylie (April 6, 1815 - February 10, 1887), British missionary, was born in London, and went to school at Drumlithie, Kincardineshire, and at Chelsea.

While apprenticed to a cabinet-maker he picked up a Chinese grammar written in Latin, and after mastering the latter tongue made such good progress with the former, that in 1846 James Legge engaged him to superintend the London Missionary Society's press at Shanghai. In this position he acquired a wide knowledge of Chinese religion and civilization, and especially of their mathematics, so that he was able to show that Sir George Horner's method (1819) of solving equations of all orders had, been known to the Chinese mathematicians of the 14th century.

He made several journeys into the interior, notably in 1858 with Lord Elgin up the Yangtze and in 1868 with Griffith John to the capital of Szechuen and the source of the Han. He completed the distribution of the 1 million Chinese New Testaments provided by the British and Foreign Bible Society's special fund of 1855. From 1863 he was an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society. He was succeeded by Samuel Dyer, Junior, the son of Samuel Dyer and brother-in-law of Hudson Taylor. He settled in London in 1877.

In Chinese he published books on arithmetic, geometry, algebra (De Morgan's), mechanics, astronomy (Herschel's), and The Marine Steam Engine (TJ Main and T Brown), as well as translations of the Gospel According to Matthew and the Gospel According to Mark. In English his chief works were Notes on Chinese Literature (Shanghai, 1867), and scattered articles collected under the title Chinese Researches by Alexander Wylie (Shanghai, 1897).

[edit] References

• Hudson Taylor & China’s Open Century Volume Six: Assault On The Nine; Alfred James Broomhall; Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1988

[edit] See also

• H Cordier, Life and Labours of A. Wylie (1887).
• 19th Century Protestant Missions in China
• List of China Inland Mission missionaries in China
• List of Protestant missionaries in China
• Christianity in China

Persondata
NAME	Wylie, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	missionary in China
DATE OF BIRTH	April 6, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH	London, England
DATE OF DEATH	February 10, 1887
PLACE OF DEATH	London, England

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.