Life

He was born at Barnstaple

Barnstaple

Barnstaple is a town and civil parish in the local government district of North Devon in the county of Devon, England, UK. It lies west southwest of Bristol, north of Plymouth and northwest of the county town of Exeter. The old spelling Barnstable is now obsolete.It is the main town of the...

 in August 1633, the son of another Thomas Brancker, a graduate of Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth oldest college of the University. The main entrance is on the east side of Turl Street...

, who was in 1626 a schoolmaster near Ilchester

Ilchester

Ilchester is a village and civil parish, situated on the River Yeo or Ivel, five miles north of Yeovil, in the English county of Somerset. The parish, which includes the village of Sock Dennis and the old parish of Northover, has a population of 2,021...

, and about 1630 head-master of the Barnstaple High School. The family originally bore the name of Brouncker. Young Brancker matriculated at his father's college 8 November 1652; proceeded B.A. 15 June 1655, and was elected a probationer fellow of Exeter 30 June 1655, and full fellow 10 July 1656. After taking his master's degree (22 April 1658), he took to preaching, but he refused to conform to the ceremonies of the church of England, and was deprived of his fellowship 4 June 1663.

He then retired to Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, changed his views, and applied for and obtained episcopal ordination. He became a minister at Whitegate, Cheshire, but his reputation as a mathematician reached William Brereton, 3rd Baron Brereton

William Brereton, 3rd Baron Brereton

William Brereton, 3rd Baron Brereton FRS was an English mathematician and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1659 and became Baron Brereton in the Irish peerage in 1664....

, who gave him the rectory of Tilston

Tilston

Tilston is a village and a civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. At the 2001 Census, the population was recorded as 627.St Mary's Church, Tilston is a Grade II* listed building....

, near Malpas

Malpas, Cheshire

Malpas is a large village which used to be a market town, and it is also a civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The parish lies on the border with Shropshire and Wales...

, in 1668. He resigned the benefice after a few months, and became head-master of the grammar school at Macclesfield

Macclesfield

Macclesfield is a market town within the unitary authority of Cheshire East, the county palatine of Chester, also known as the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The population of the Macclesfield urban sub-area at the time of the 2001 census was 50,688...

, where he died in November 1676. He was buried in Macclesfield church, and the inscription on his monument states that he was a linguist as well as a mathematician, chemist, and natural philosopher, and that he pursued studies under Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle FRS was a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology. He has been variously described as English, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the English plantations of...

.

Around 1665 he married Hannah Meyrick and had four daughters and two sons. The youngest son, Benjamin, became a gold and silversmith in Liverpool and was the grandfather of Peter Whitfield Brancker, Mayor of Liverpool (1801).

Works

Branker gained his first knowledge of mathematics and chemistry from Peter Sthael of Strasburg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

, a chemist and Rosicrucian

Rosicrucian

Rosicrucianism is a philosophical secret society, said to have been founded in late medieval Germany by Christian Rosenkreuz. It holds a doctrine or theology "built on esoteric truths of the ancient past", which, "concealed from the average man, provide insight into nature, the physical universe...

, 'who before 1660 settled in Oxford as a private tutor, at the suggestion of Robert Boyle, and numbered Ralph Bathurst

Ralph Bathurst

Ralph Bathurst was an English theologian and physician.-Early life:He was born in Hothorpe, Northamptonshire in 1620 and educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry.He graduated with a B.A...

, Christopher Wren

Christopher Wren

Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...

, with Branker, Anthony Wood

Anthony Wood

Anthony Wood or Anthony à Wood was an English antiquary.-Early life:Anthony Wood was the fourth son of Thomas Wood , BCL of Oxford, where Anthony was born...

 and others among his pupils. Brancker's earliest publication was Doctrinæ Sphæricæ Adumbratio unà cum usu Globorum Artificialium, Oxford, 1662. In 1668 he published a translation of an introduction to algebra from the High Dutch of Rhonius, and added a factor table for odd numbers up to 100,000. The book was licensed 18 May 1665, but the publication was delayed to enable John Pell

John Pell

-Early life:He was born at Southwick in Sussex. He was educated at Steyning Grammar School, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen. During his university career he became an accomplished linguist, and even before he took his B.A. degree corresponded with Henry Briggs and...

 to add notes and corrections. John Collins

John Collins (mathematician)

John Collins was an English mathematician. He is most known for his extensive correspondence with leading scientists and mathematicians such as Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, and John Wallis...

 also gave Brancker assistance over the book, and praised it in a letter to James Gregory in 1668. The value of the table and translation is acknowledged in an early paper in the Philosophical Transactions (No. 35, pp. 688–9), and the table and preface were reprinted by Francis Maseres

Francis Maseres

Francis Maseres was an English lawyer. He is known as attorney general of the Province of Quebec, judge, mathematician, historian, member of the Royal Society, and cursitor baron of the exchequer.- Biography :...

 in a volume of mathematical tracts (1795), together with James Bernouilli's Doctrine of Permutations and other papers. Maseres states that John Wallis thought well of Brancker's table, and corrected a few errors in it. A manuscript key to an elaborate cipher

Cipher

In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. In non-technical usage, a “cipher” is the same thing as a “code”; however, the concepts...

 in the possession of J. H. Cooke, F.S.A., is attributed to Branker and is described in the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries for 1877.