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Herschell Filipowski

Lithuanian-born British Hebraist, editor and actuary (1816–1872)

Herschell E. Filipowski (1816 – 12 June 1872), also known as Tzvi Hirsh Filipowski (Hebrew: צְבִי הִירְשׁ פִילִיפּוֹבְסְקִי, Yiddish: צבי הירש פֿיליפּאָווסקי), was a Lithuanian-born British Jewish Hebraist, editor, mathematician, linguist and actuary.2

From Wikipedia’s article on Herschell Filipowski (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born 1816, died 1872.1

Companies

Early life and education

Early life

Herschell Filipowski was born in the town of Virbalen, Russian Empire (today Virbalis, Lithuania) in 1816. He showed great aptitude for the study of mathematics and languages at an early age, and was fortunate in finding a Polish schoolmaster who secretly aided him in acquiring the rudiments of a modern education. Besides his native Yiddish, Filipowski became conversant in Polish, Russian, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese, and at age 15 he published An Almanac for One Hundred Years in both Polish and Russian.

In 1839 he emigrated to England, and received an appointment as a Teacher of Hebrew and Oriental languages at the Jews' College and the West Metropolitan Jewish School. His first published work was Mo'ed Mo'adim on the Jewish, Karaite, Christian, and Muslim calendars (1846; republished 1863), with tables from the Creation to the year AM 6000. In 1847 he edited a Hebrew annual, Ha-Asif, or Harvest: The Annual Hebrew Magazine, containing various essays on Hebrew literature and mathematics, in both Hebrew and English (1849).

The Jewish Chronicle praised Filipowski's calendrical calculations for correcting the defects of Elias H. Lindo's Calendar, especially his erroneous method for calculating the termination of Shabbat in London. According to Filipowski, for almost a decade London Jews had been ending the Shabbat and festivals at the wrong time. Even more serious was the implication that, since the termination of the day affects the time at which the brit milah takes place, users of Lindo's Calendar might have performed that operation on the seventh or ninth day, instead of the eighth day as required by Jewish law.

From Wikipedia’s article on Herschell Filipowski (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: writer, actuary, translator, mathematician, Hebraist, editor, inventor, publisher.4

Actuarial career

Filipowski afterwards was employed as an actuary for the Colonial and Standard Life offices in Edinburgh, a position he kept for about eight years. He later worked as an actuary for the Mercantile, Professional, and General Life and Guarantee Insurance Company, and as an assistant computer at the Royal and Briton companies.

In this capacity, he published A Table of Anti-Logarithms (1849), which included a testimonial by mathematician Augustus De Morgan and established Filipowski's name among mathematicians. He later published Napier's Canon of Logarithms (1857), a translation of John Napier's Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio from the Latin into English, and in 1864–66 he edited Francis Baily's Doctrine of Life Annuities and Assurance. The monthly periodical The Actuarial Magazine, devoted to tables of different kinds, was also edited by Filipowski for a short time.

Filipowski returned to London in 1860, where he designed a multiplying machine which made use of Slonimski's theorem. The machine's calculating rods include a set of fifty-six wooden cylindrical rods stored in holes in a wooden mahogany case. One of Filipowski's calculating devices survives at the Science Museum, London.

From Wikipedia’s article on Herschell Filipowski (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • Born1816, Virbalis5
  • Died1872, London6
  • CitizenshipUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland7

Awards

  • Date not recordedFellow of the Society of Antiquaries8

Sources

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