William Jones
British philologist, scholar and judge
Who was William Jones?
Sir William Jones (28 September 1746 – 27 April 1794) was a British philologist, scholar and judge. Born in Westminster to the Welsh mathematician William Jones, he moved to the Bengal Presidency where Jones served as a puisne judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William and also became a scholar of ancient Indian history. He is known for being one of the earliest scholars after father Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux to assert the kinship of the Indo-European languages. William Jones was born in London; his father William Jones (1675–1749) was a mathematician from Anglesey in Wales, noted for introducing the mathematical use of the symbol π. Jones's father died when he was aged three, and his mother Mary Nix Jones raised him. He was sent to Harrow School in September 1753 and then went on to University College, Oxford. Jones also founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1784.
Historical significance
The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, who in addition to his native languages English and Welsh, learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age. By the end of his life, he knew eight languages with critical thoroughness.