John of Tynemouth

Little is known of John of Tynemouth, however we do know he was mathematician in the 1200s and wrote a text entitled De curvis superficiebus or Liber de curvis superficiebus Archimendis which was an important work in the history of medieval geometry that transmitted the ideas of Archimedes measurements of spheres to other mathematicians at the time.

Most of what we know about John of Tynemouth we learn from an analysis of his work by Wilbur R Knorr who has analysed the style of his works and other works at the time.

Knorr suggests that John may also have gone by the names John of London (not to be confused with the lawyer of the same name) and John Bandoun. It is suggested that John used ‘of Tynemouth’ when he moved to London but then when he later spent time in Paris, London would be a more widely known he used this moniker instead. He is also sometimes known as Johannes de Tinemue.

From analysis of the style of De curvis, Knorr suggests that John is likely to have also been responsible for these works too:

• De circulo quadrando, a revision of another of Archimedes' works, the De quadratura circuli
• De quadratura circuli;
• De figuris isoperimetris
• a paraphrase of Euclid's Elementafrom the translation of Adelard of Bath, later cited by Roger Bacon;
• Quaelibet media proportionalia.

His works were used by a number of other medieval scholars including Robert Grosseteste, Jordanus de Nemore, Gerard of Brussels, and Roger Bacon. Bacon was a contemporary of his and described him as a ‘perfect mathematician’ in  the work Opus Tertium (1267).