A noted English mathematician, alchemist and astrologer as well as a confidant to Elizabeth I.
He graduated from St. Johns College, Cambridge aged eighteen. He left England to study and lecture in continental Europe. He returned to England in the 1540s, was briefly jailed, accused of black magic, in the 1550s but was released to become a confidant of Elizabeth I, even deciding on the auspicious date for her coronation in 1558?.
Travelling widely with a pension from Elizabeth I, and possibly acting as a spy, Dee strove to increase his knowledge and add to his library. His main published work was Monad Hieroglyphia (1564) a dense Kaballa? influenced work on alchemy. But in 1570? he wrote the preface to the first English translation of Euclid's works.
He met [Edward Kelly]? (or Kelley), a convicted forger, in 1582 and Kelly became his companion. Kelly acted as intermediary for Dee in his attempts to receive visions from 'angels' using a globe of crystal - a magical system and language called Enochian? was apparently derived from this scrying.
Dee's crystal globe ended up in the British Museum un-noticed for many years in the mineral collection
When Elizabeth I died in 1603 so did Dee's influence, he was forced to retire to his home at Mortlake where he died in poverty.
He was married three times and had eight children.
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