John Howard (1753–1799), was a British schoolmaster and poet who as a mathematician worked on the geometry of the sphere.
He was the son of Ralph Howard, a private in the British Army, and he was brought up by relations in Carlisle.
After being apprenticed to an uncle as a cork-cutter at the age of thirteen, he worked as a sailor, carpenter and flax-dresser.
There, he rented the school-house built by Dr Charles Hutton and gained a position as instructor.
1798 saw the appearance of his long-projected Treatise on Spherical Geometry, after which his health rapidly declined.