Alexander John Ellis FRS (14 June 1814 - 28 October 1890) was an English mathematician and philologist. He changed his name from his father's name Sharpe to his mother's maiden name Ellis in 1825, based on a condition for receiving significant financial support from a relative on his mother's side.[1]
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He was born Alexander John Sharpe in Hoxton, Middlesex to a wealthy family. His father, James Birch Sharpe, was a notable artist and physician, who was later appointed Esquire of Windlesham. His mother, Ann Ellis, was from a noble background herself, but was not known by anyone, even to this day, from where her family fortune arose. His brother James Birch Sharpe junior, died at the Battle of Inkerman, during the Crimean War, and his other brother William Henry Sharpe, served with the Lancashire Fusiliers, after moving north with his family, to Cumberland, due to military work.
Alexander was educated at Shrewsbury School, Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1837). Initially trained in mathematics and the classics, he became a well-known phonetician of his time. Through his work in phonetics he also became interested in vocal pitch and by extension in musical pitch as well as speech and song.
Ellis is also noted for translating and extensively annotating Hermann Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone. The second edition of this translation, published in 1885, contains an appendix which summarizes Ellis' own work on related matters.
In his writings on musical pitch and scales,[2] Ellis elaborates his notion and notation of cents for musical intervals which became especially influential in Comparative musicology, a predecessor of ethnomusicology. Analyzing the scales (tone systems) of various extra-European musical traditions, Ellis also showed that the diversity of tone systems cannot be explained by a single physical law, as had been argued by earlier scholars.
In part V of his work On early English pronunciation, he applied the Dialect Test across Britain, and distinguished forty-two different dialects in England and the Scottish Lowlands.
There are claims that Ellis himself was pitch-deaf, i.e. could not distinguish different pitches with his own ears. Today, this claim is often not supported anymore.[3]
He was acknowledged by Shaw as the prototype of Professor Henry Higgins of Pygmalion (the basis for the musical My Fair Lady).[4] He was elected in June 1864 a Fellow of the Royal Society [5]