LYONS (Israel)

, a good mathematician and botanist, was the son of a Polish Jew silversmith, and teacher of Hebrew at Cambridge in England, where he was come to settle, and where young Lyons was born, 1739. He was a very extraordinary young man for parts and ingenuity; and shewed very early in life a great inclination to learning, particularly mathematics, on which account he was much patronized by Dr. Smith, master of Trinity college. About 1755 he began to study botany, which he continued occasionally till his death; in which he made a considerable progress, and could remember not only the Linnæan names of almost all the English plants, but even the synonyma of the old botanists; and he had prepared large materials for a Flora Cantabrigiensis, describing fully every part of each plant from the specimen, without being obliged to consult, or being liable to be misled by, former authors.

In 1758, he obtained much celebrity by publishing A Treatise on Fluxions, dedicated to his patron, Dr. Smith; and in 1763, Fasciculus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam, &c. In the same year, or the year before, he read Lectures on Botany at Oxford with great applause, to at least 60 pupils; but he could not be prevailed on to make a long absence from Cambridge.

Mr. Lyons was some time employed as one of the computers of the Nautical Almanac; and besides he received srequent other presents from the Board of Longitude for his own inventions.——He had studied the English history; and could quote whole passages from the Monkish writers verbatim. He could read Latin and French with ease, but wrote the former ill. He was appointed by the Board of Longitude to sail with Capt. Phipps, in his voyage towards the North Pole, in 1773, as astronomical observator; and he discharged that office to the satisfaction of his employers. After his return from this voyage, he married, and settled in London, where he died of the meazles in about two years.

At the time of his death he was engaged in preparing for the press, a complete edition of all the works of the late learned Dr. Halley; a work very much wanted. —His Calculations in Spherical Trigonometry abridged, were printed in the Philos. Trans. vol. 65, for the year 1775, pa. 470.—After his death, his name appeared in the title-page of A Geographical Dictionary, the astronomical parts of which were said to be “taken from the papers of the late Mr. Israel Lyons of Cambridge, author of several valuable mathematical productions, and astronomer in lord Mulgrave's voyage to the northern hemisphere.”—The astronomical and other mathematical calculations, printed in the account of captain Phipps's voyage towards the north pole, mentioned above, were made by Mr. Lyons. This appeared afterwards, by the acknowledgment of captain Phipps, when Dr. Horsley detected a material error in some part| of them, in his Remarks on the Observations made in the late Voyage, &c, 1774.

“The Scholar's Instructor, or Hebrew Grammar, by Israel Lyons, Teacher of the Hebrew Tongue in the University of Cambridge,” the 2d edit. &c, 1757, 8vo, was the production of his father; as was also another Treatise printed at the Cambridge press, under the title of “Observations and Enquiries relating to various parts of Scripture History, 1761.”