Alexander Wylie

Who was Alexander Wylie?

Alexander Wylie, British Protestant Christian missionary to China. He is known for his translation work and scholarship during the late Qing Dynasty.

He was born in London, and went to school at Drumlithie, Kincardineshire, and at Chelsea.

While apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, Wylie picked up a Chinese grammar written in Latin, and after mastering the latter tongue made such good progress in Chinese that in 1846 James Legge engaged him to superintend the London Missionary Society's press at Shanghai. In this position he acquired a wide knowledge of Chinese religion and civilization, and especially of mathematics, so that he was able to demonstrate in his paper Jottings on the Science of the Chinese that Sir George Horner's method of solving equations of all orders had been known to the Chinese mathematicians of the 14th century.

He made several journeys into the interior, notably in 1858 with Lord Elgin on a British Navy gunboat up the Yangtze and to Nanking, where he served as one member of a delegation of three to meet with officials of the Taiping, and in 1868 with Griffith John to the capital of Szechuen and the source of the Han.