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Sir William Jones (1675 - 3 July 1749) was a mathematician.
He owed his successful career partly to the patronage of the distinguished Bulkeley family of north Wales, and later to the Earl of Macclesfield.
Jones served at sea, teaching mathematics on board ship between 1695 and 1702. After his voyages were over he became a teacher of mathematics in London. He also held a number of posts in government offices.
As a mathematician, his main claim to fame is that he proposed the use of the symbol π (the Greek letter pi) to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
He became a close friend of Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Edmund Halley. In 1712, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was later its Vice-President.
Jones published Synopsis Palmariorum Pathesios 1706 , a work which was intended for beginners and which included theorem on differential calculus and infinite series .
Navigation was also a topic which interested Jones and his first published work was A New Compendium of the Whole Art of Navigation.
In 1731 he published Discourses of the Natural Philosophy of the Elements.
His son, also named William Jones, was a famous philologist who discovered the Indo-European language group.
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