Pan Lei (1646 – 1708) was a Qing dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

 scholar. He wrote the prefaces for a number of works that appeared in his time. In the preface to writer Qu Dajun's book Guangdong Xinyu, widely regarded as a valuable source on the economic and social conditions of Guangdong

Guangdong

Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...

 in 1700, Pan wrote about the beauty, natural resources, and unique history of East Guangdong. Pan was also involved in the study of mathematics. In the preface to Mei Wending's Fangchenglun, a treatise on linear algebra

Linear algebra

Linear algebra is a branch of mathematics that studies vector spaces, also called linear spaces, along with linear functions that input one vector and output another. Such functions are called linear maps and can be represented by matrices if a basis is given. Thus matrix theory is often...

written in 1690, he wrote:

Although mathematics is the last of the Six Arts (liui ), it has wide applications. Without mathematics, it is impossible to understand the measurement of Heaven and the
survey of the Earth; it is impossible to regulate taxes and to manage finances; it is impossible to raise armies and dispose troops; it is impossible to administer civil engineering.

Pan Lei's collected works also included the opinions of women who believed that poetry writing was considered unnecessary for women, which led to their works being kept secret.