Rowning, John

, an ingenious English mathematician and philosopher, was fellow of Magdalen college, Cambridge, and afterwards rector of Anderby in Lincolnshire, in the gift of that society. He was a constant attendant at the meetings of the Spalding Society, and was a man of a philosophical turn of mind, though of a cheerful and companionable disposition. He had a good genius for mechanical contrivances in particular. In 1738 he printed at Cambridge, in 8vo, “A Compendious System of Natural Philosophy,” in 2 vols. 8vo; a very ingenious work, which has gone through several editions. He had also two pieces inserted in the Philosophical Transactions, viz. I. “A Description of a Barometer wherein the Scale of Variation may be increased at pleasure;” vol. 38, p. 39. And 2. “Directions for making a Machine for finding the Roots of Kquations universally, with the manner of using it;” vol. 60, p. 240. Mr. Rowning died at his lodgings in Carey -street, near Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, the latter end of November 1771, at the age of seventy-two. Though a very ingenious and pleasant man, he had but an unpromising and forbidding appearance: he was tall, stooping in the shoulders, and of a sallow down-looking countenance*.²