David Gregory
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this is a placeholder for David Gregpry
Stephensonia
Yet another ardant Newtonian, perhaps his being made fellow had something to do with his strong support of Isaac?
Authored entries
David Gregory also [Gregorie]
In 17th century Scotland, you can joust for a professorship! David Gregory, nephew of the famous Saint Andrews mathematician James Gregory (1638-1675), was born in Upper Kirkgate, Aberdeen, on June 3, 1659. He was educated for a while at nearby Marischal College, was endowed financially by the murder of his older brother, and was set loose to pursue his private interests in maths, physics, and astronomy. Without graduating from Marischal, he unhorsed the mathematics chairman at Edinburgh University in a broadsheet debate in 1683 and took his job. He was given a hasty masters from Edinburgh for decorum's sake, and he taught mathematics for seven years, and also optics, mechanics, hydrostatics, and even anatomy.
Town-gown quarrels arose in 1689, turned gradually libellous, and eventually attracted the Hanoverian committee of visitation then scouring Scottish universities for Cartesians and other treasoners. Not holding any truly radical views on anything, Gregory nevertheless saw fit by 1691 to take a fresh appointment comfortably far away, in Oxford. Gregory was caught up in the political turmoil in Scotland in 1690, which appears to have been partly, but only partly, an issue between Presbyterians and Episcopalians. The Gregorys were staunch Episcopalians in Scotland. His mother, David Gregory's first wife, was especially so and reared her children in this faith. Gregory's grandfather had been proscribed during the 1640s for his religious views, and the problems of Gregory himself in Edinburgh in 1690 appear to have been related in part to this issue. Though he was not forced out, he found the atmosphere inhospitable, and he actively pursued an alternative, which he found south of his native borders.
This was the Savilian chair of astronomy, in which he spent the rest of his professional life. With his new post he was given another MA and a desultory MD, along with a non-fellow MA commoner appointment in Balliol College. Sir Henry Savile had projected a design of printing a uniform series of the ancient mathematicians; in pursuance of which Gregory published an edition of Euclid, and in conjunction with Doctor Edmund Halley, and endowed a chair. He took a quick trip to Flanders in 1693, then settled into productive teaching and publishing until 1707, the year in which the Act of Union between Scotland and England drew him to work on government fiscal matters instead of science. He was chiefly responsible for rationalizing the Scottish Mint, even as his mentor Sir Isaac Newton was doing for the London Mint. Gregory owed the professorship at Oxford to Newton's strong recommedation and Flamsteed's support. Newton secured his appointment to a temporary and well paid position with the Edinburgh Mint at the time of union. In the same year he became Savilian Professor he was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society.
- An anecdote is told of David Gregory of Kinnairdie, Dr Gregorys father, which it would not perhaps, be altogether proper to omit. He had, as was remarked at the beginning, a turn for mathematical and mechanical subjects, and during Queen Annes wars had contrived a method to increase the effect of field ordnance. He sent it to the Savilian professor, his son, wishing his opinion, together with Sir Isaac Newtons. Gregory showed it to Newton, who advised him earnestly to destroy it, as said Newton, "Any invention of that kind, if it even were effectual, would soon become known to the enemy, so that it would only increase the horrors of war." There is every reason to think that the professor followed Newtons advice, as the machine was never afterwards to be found. [1]
David Gregory became heir to the considerable family estate, and a member of the gentry, upon the murder of his elder brother. By two wives, his father David Gregory had twenty-nine children. David the mathematician was the third son by the first wife, but the oldest surviving one, and ultimately the oldest surviving child. It seems clear from the accounts that the family was wealthy after the inheritance, which came while our he was still an infant. In 1690 the family estate at Kinnairdie, where Gregory was reared, was made over to him. Whatever his contemporaries thought of him -- he was a scientist who worked when he could have enjoyed a life of leisure.
David Gregory certainly supported Newton strongly in the Priority dispute controversy arguing, as did Wallis, that Leibniz had learnt of the calculus through a letter of Collins. He also worked on optics publishing Catoptricae et dioptricae sphericae elementa in 1695. This work describes telescopes which were a special interest of his. He also experimented with making an achromatic telescope. Exercitatio geometria de dimensione curvarum (1684). In 1702 he published Astronomiae physicae et geometricae elementa which was a popular account of Newton 's theories. David Gregory did important work on series. In 1703 a complete edition of Euclid that remained the standard one for nearly two centuries. He worked with Halley on an edition of Apollonius' Conics, which appeared posthumously, 1710. In 1745, from Gregory's lecture notes at Edinburgh, Maclaurin published Treatise of Practical Geometry. Gregory left a manuscript on mechanics and hydrostatics lectures at Edinburgh.
In his lectures and his principal textbook, Professor Gregory was the first to cast astronomy completely in the alloy of Newtonian gravitational principles. He also gave undergraduates an enduringly useful guide to optics, whose special contribution was to propose an achromatic telescope. More generally he extended his uncle's work on quadrature by infinite series, and shed light on vexing issues in mathematics and theoretical astronomy, including the catenary curve, eclipses, the 'parallax problem', and the Cassinian orbital model for comets.
At Edinburgh David Gregory taught Newtonian theories. He is famed for this since he was the first university teacher to teach the 'modern' theories at a time when even Cambridge was still teaching Greek natural philosophy. Gregory's lecture notes at Edinburgh were to form the basis of Maclaurin's Treatise of Practical Geometry which was published in 1745. Gregory himself published Exercitatio geometria de dimensione curvarum in 1684 while at Edinburgh. Gregory also lectured at Edinburgh on mechanics and hydrostatics.
David Gregory took seriously ill with consumption, Gregory collapsed while travelling from Bath to London and died in an inn in Maidenhead on 10 October, 1708.