ELLIS (originally SHARPE), ALEXANDER JOHN (1814 1890), English philologist, mathematician, musician and writer on phonetics, was born at Hoxton, London, on June 14, 1814. He was educated at Shrewsbury, Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and took his degree in high mathematical honours. He was the first in England to reduce the study of phonetics to a sci ence. His most important work, to which the greater part of his life was devoted, is On Early English Pronunciation, with special reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer (1869-89) . He had long been associated with Isaac Pitman in his attempts to reform Eng lish spelling, and published A Plea for Phonotypy and Phonog raphy (1845) and A Plea for Phonetic Spelling (1848) ; and con tributed the articles on "Phonetics" and "Speech-sounds" to the 9th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He died in London on Oct. 28, 189o.