ABSTRACT
To mathematical circles, John Dee, who was born on 13thJuly 1527, is most famous for writing the Mathematical Preface to the first translation of Euclid’s Elements into vernacular English, published in 1570. Dee was not an ordinary man by any stretch of the imagination. An English mathematician, astronomer, cryptographer, and a book collector, he was also a conjurer of spirits and travelled around Europe to work with and learn from people interested in the similar dark arts as he. History teaches us how both books and mathematics are often perceived as dangerous knowledge and can be prohibited, burned, or otherwise destroyed in order to stop the spread of such knowledge. Dee had the misfortune to experience this during his lifetime and through his own library. Dee’s project was not a little one. It was to understand the world and to be able to articulate the connections between the two worlds, the natural and supernatural, through the study of mathematics.
