Jonas Moore

He took part in two of the most ambitious English civil engineering projects of the 17th century: draining the Great Level of the Fens and building the Mole at Tangier.

In 1658, Moore was able to produce a 16-sheet Mapp of the Great Levell of the Fens, which provided an effective means of displaying the Company's achievements in altering the Fenland landscape of East Anglia.

When it was completed in March 1664, Samuel Pepys, an active member of the Tangiers Committee, was impressed with the map "which is very pleasant, and I purpose to have it finely set out and hung up.

During the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Moore met Prince Rupert at The Nore (off the Thames Estuary) with 16 vessels loaded with powder and shot.

With the end of the war in 1674, Moore was able to pursue his interest in astronomy and attempted to gain support from the Royal Society for an observatory at Chelsea College.

[13] Towards the end of his life, Moore took a great interest in the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital in London and he was made a governor in December 1676.

Jonas junior died in 1682 and so it was the husbands of Moore's two daughters, rather than the son, who undertook the publication of the "New Systeme", which with the final parts being written by John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley, was completed in 1681.

Among such company would be Samuel Pepys, who recorded one such session in the Rhenish wine house on 23 May 1661 "...and there came Jonas Moore, the mathematician, to us, and there he did by discourse make us fully believe that England and France were once the same continent, by very good arguments, and spoke very many things, not so much to prove the Scripture false as that the time therein is not well computed nor understood."

Moore and Hooke were among a small group that met at Wren's house as the "New Philosophicall Club" in 1676, at a time when the public's opinion of philosophers and the Royal Society was at a low ebb.