(John), an ingenious English mathematician and philosopher, was fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge, and afterwards Rector of Anderby in Lincolnshire, in the gift of that Society. He was a constant attendant at the meetings of the Spalding Society, and was a man of a great philosophical habit and turn of mind, though of a cheerful and companionable disposition. He had a good genius for mechanical contrivances in particular. In 1738 he printed at Cambridge, A Compendious System of Natural Philosophy, in 2 vols 8vo; a very ingenious work, which has gone through several editions. He had also two pieces inserted in the Philosophical Transactions, viz. 1. A Description of a Barometer, wherein the Scale of Variation may be increased at pleasure; vol. 38. p. 39. And, 2. Directions for making a Machine for finding the Roots of Equations universally, with the Manner of using it; vol. 60. p. 240.—Mr Rowning died at his lodgings in Carey-Street, near Lincoln's-Inn Fields, the latter end of November 1771, at 72 years of age.

Though a very ingenious and pleasant man, he had but an unpromising and forbidding appearance: he was tall, flapping in the shoulders, and of a frowzy down-looking countenance.