Alexander John Ellis

British philologist. He studied at Cambridge, wrote much on mathematical, musical, and philological questions, and did more than any other scholar to advance the scientific study of phonetics, of early English pronunciation, and of existing English dialects. He arranged, with Sir Isaac Pitman, a system of printing called phonotype, which aimed at the accurate representation of sounds in print, and published Fonetic Frend (1849). His major work was Early English Pronunciation (1869–89).

Alexander John Ellis (or Alexander Sharpe) (14 June 1814 - 28 October 1890) was an English philologist and music theorist. He is noted for translating and extensively annotating Hermann Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone, in which he among other things introduces the notation of cents for musical intervals.

He is sometimes considered to be one of the founders of the field ethnomusicology because of his work in the science of sound. MacMahon, Ellis , Alexander John (1814–1890), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 14 June 2006